A Baptist World Alliance group met for the second of five meetings in an effort to overcome differences that bar Baptists and Methodists from more effective mission together.

By Jeff Brumley

Nowadays, Baptists and Methodists seem the least likely to become entangled in theological disputes or battles over turf and members. Pulpit swaps and shared downtown ministries are increasingly common between them.

But that was not always the case. Historically, the two traditions were often bitter rivals in cities and rural communities across the nation, said Bill Leonard, professor of Baptist studies and church history at Wake Forest University School of Divinity.

“Their theological differences have been very pronounced,” Leonard said, adding the divisions go back to the nation’s founding. “They used to have debates on the frontier over infant baptism, falling from grace and, in the case of Calvinistic Baptists, whether Christ’s death on the cross was only for the elect.”

But a group of modern-day Baptist and Methodist clergy and theologians has been hard at work to heal the wounds of the past in order to forge friendships in the present. Their motivation is Scripture’s demand for Christian unity.

“Jesus prayed that his disciple community — the church — would be one so the world would know that the Father had sent the Son into the world,” said Curtis Freeman, research professor of theology and Baptist studies and director of the Baptist House of Studies at Duke Divinity School.

So the mission of the church is contingent on the unity of the church, Freeman said.

“Our divisions actually become impediments to the mission of the church,” he said. “That is why we need this.”

Ongoing dialogue

“This” is the bilateral dialogue between the Baptist World Alliance and the World Methodist Council. Freeman is co-chair of the 14-member group that includes seven Baptists.

It was the group’s second meeting with three more to go in as many years. They’ve met in locations around the world. The goal is to finalize a document of agreements and differences in the fifth year.

The theme of the February meeting in Singapore was “faith confessed and remembered.” Freeman said it served as a starting point for conversations aimed at discovering commonalities between the two traditions.

“We talked a lot about how we understand the faith — what is the faith to you, what do you mean when you say ‘Christian faith,’” he said.

It was interesting for the Baptist contingent to hear how important it is to the Methodists that John Wesley founded their movement. Their language describing Christianity also was very different from that used by Baptists.

“For them it was much more of an experiential religion,” Freeman said.

In addition to the need for greater understanding between Baptists and Methodists, participants explored the mutual exchange of gifts possible between the two traditions.

Often the values are shared but expressed in different ways.

“Methodists have put a lot of influence historically on … the call to holiness in life,” Freeman said. “In Baptist life that’s been there, but we have more of an emphasis on missions.”

Participants also discussed increased participation on a common witness, and how they might find more ways to work together in regions around the world.

‘We softened our rhetoric’

Doing that means identifying obstacles, and one of the major ones remains the baptizing of infants by Methodists. Some Baptists through the ages have equated the practice with witchcraft, idolatry and prostitution, Freeman said.

Such extreme views, even if softened, are a bar to cooperation between Baptists and Methodists, he said.

“If Baptists don’t look at Methodists as able to make disciples and baptize and teach them, they really can’t do missions,” he said.

But there wasn’t any of that kind of talk — in either direction — in Singapore, Freeman said.

“We just softened our rhetoric with each other.”

And they must because the importance of coming together is vital for Baptists committed to the mission of God in the world, Freeman said.

His prayer is that Baptists and Methodists will no longer see each other as competitors in a shrinking market but as partners in a common mission.

“Unless we somehow tend to that question of unity, we are not going to be successful in that mission,” he said.

‘Working together’

It would be a remarkable achievement given where the two traditions started out.

At the end of the Revolutionary War, Baptists and Methodists were two of the smallest Protestant groups in the United States. By 1830, however, they were the two biggest.

“Largely because of their parallel-but-distinct approach to revivals and religious awakenings,” Leonard said.

That put them on a collision course for converts, he said, with both groups known for interrupting each others’ revival events.

The divisions continued into the 20th century as Methodists became identified with the Mainline movement.

“There was a period when Baptists would often criticize Methodists because they had given up on evangelism and had gone liberal,” Leonard said. “That was not an infrequent criticism of Methodists in the South when I was growing up in the ’60s.”

And while that is all but gone from the discussion, Leonard said baptism is an ongoing sticking point.

Where it is played out is in the membership policies of many Baptist churches which require Methodists and others baptized as infants to be re-baptized.

“That may be in many contexts the most continuing divisive issue,” he said.

But many progressive Baptists have addressed the issue by adopting open baptism policies.

There are other positive signs, including an ecumenical movement centered around common ministries in at-risk communities.

“Baptists and Methodists are working together consistently now in most towns and cities,” Leonard said.

]]>

A Baptist World Alliance group met for the second of five meetings in an effort to overcome differences that bar Baptists and Methodists from more effective mission together.

By Jeff Brumley

Nowadays, Baptists and Methodists seem the least likely to become entangled in theological disputes or battles over turf and members. Pulpit swaps and shared downtown ministries are increasingly common between them.

But that was not always the case. Historically, the two traditions were often bitter rivals in cities and rural communities across the nation, said Bill Leonard, professor of Baptist studies and church history at Wake Forest University School of Divinity.

“Their theological differences have been very pronounced,” Leonard said, adding the divisions go back to the nation’s founding. “They used to have debates on the frontier over infant baptism, falling from grace and, in the case of Calvinistic Baptists, whether Christ’s death on the cross was only for the elect.”

But a group of modern-day Baptist and Methodist clergy and theologians has been hard at work to heal the wounds of the past in order to forge friendships in the present. Their motivation is Scripture’s demand for Christian unity.

“Jesus prayed that his disciple community — the church — would be one so the world would know that the Father had sent the Son into the world,” said Curtis Freeman, research professor of theology and Baptist studies and director of the Baptist House of Studies at Duke Divinity School.

So the mission of the church is contingent on the unity of the church, Freeman said.

“Our divisions actually become impediments to the mission of the church,” he said. “That is why we need this.”

Ongoing dialogue

“This” is the bilateral dialogue between the Baptist World Alliance and the World Methodist Council. Freeman is co-chair of the 14-member group that includes seven Baptists.

It was the group’s second meeting with three more to go in as many years. They’ve met in locations around the world. The goal is to finalize a document of agreements and differences in the fifth year.

The theme of the February meeting in Singapore was “faith confessed and remembered.” Freeman said it served as a starting point for conversations aimed at discovering commonalities between the two traditions.

“We talked a lot about how we understand the faith — what is the faith to you, what do you mean when you say ‘Christian faith,’” he said.

It was interesting for the Baptist contingent to hear how important it is to the Methodists that John Wesley founded their movement. Their language describing Christianity also was very different from that used by Baptists.

“For them it was much more of an experiential religion,” Freeman said.

In addition to the need for greater understanding between Baptists and Methodists, participants explored the mutual exchange of gifts possible between the two traditions.

Often the values are shared but expressed in different ways.

“Methodists have put a lot of influence historically on … the call to holiness in life,” Freeman said. “In Baptist life that’s been there, but we have more of an emphasis on missions.”

Participants also discussed increased participation on a common witness, and how they might find more ways to work together in regions around the world.

‘We softened our rhetoric’

Doing that means identifying obstacles, and one of the major ones remains the baptizing of infants by Methodists. Some Baptists through the ages have equated the practice with witchcraft, idolatry and prostitution, Freeman said.

Such extreme views, even if softened, are a bar to cooperation between Baptists and Methodists, he said.

“If Baptists don’t look at Methodists as able to make disciples and baptize and teach them, they really can’t do missions,” he said.

But there wasn’t any of that kind of talk — in either direction — in Singapore, Freeman said.

“We just softened our rhetoric with each other.”

And they must because the importance of coming together is vital for Baptists committed to the mission of God in the world, Freeman said.

His prayer is that Baptists and Methodists will no longer see each other as competitors in a shrinking market but as partners in a common mission.

“Unless we somehow tend to that question of unity, we are not going to be successful in that mission,” he said.

‘Working together’

It would be a remarkable achievement given where the two traditions started out.

At the end of the Revolutionary War, Baptists and Methodists were two of the smallest Protestant groups in the United States. By 1830, however, they were the two biggest.

“Largely because of their parallel-but-distinct approach to revivals and religious awakenings,” Leonard said.

That put them on a collision course for converts, he said, with both groups known for interrupting each others’ revival events.

The divisions continued into the 20th century as Methodists became identified with the Mainline movement.

“There was a period when Baptists would often criticize Methodists because they had given up on evangelism and had gone liberal,” Leonard said. “That was not an infrequent criticism of Methodists in the South when I was growing up in the ’60s.”

And while that is all but gone from the discussion, Leonard said baptism is an ongoing sticking point.

Where it is played out is in the membership policies of many Baptist churches which require Methodists and others baptized as infants to be re-baptized.

“That may be in many contexts the most continuing divisive issue,” he said.

But many progressive Baptists have addressed the issue by adopting open baptism policies.

There are other positive signs, including an ecumenical movement centered around common ministries in at-risk communities.

“Baptists and Methodists are working together consistently now in most towns and cities,” Leonard said.

Kim and Marc Wyatt are showing congregations how to engage the world in their own communities.

By Jeff Brumley

International mission work is taking on a whole different look — at least the way it’s being practiced by some Baptists in North Carolina.

And yes, that means in North Carolina, not Uganda or Costa Rica or anywhere else overseas.

It began last year with the arrival of Kim and Marc Wyatt, Cooperative Baptist field personnel who specialize in ministering to refugees, immigrants and other internationals by connecting them with local congregations with the desire and capacity to minister to them.

It’s a big shift and a significant one because it turns the concepts of missions on its head, said Larry Hovis, executive coordinator of CBF of North Carolina.

Instead of congregations sending missionaries overseas to serve those in need, the Wyatts are here to show congregations how to do that right in their own communities, Hovis said.

“Their main job is to equip and energize our congregations to engage in the mission,” he said of the couple who are working in Raleigh. “They are here to teach us and empower us and work alongside us and ultimately to give the ministry away.”

Ministry matchmakers

Still, the Wyatts’ approach is one they developed during several years of international mission work.

The native North Carolinians’ first post was in Thailand. Their next post, in Canada where working with international populations in some of Canada’s largest cities clued them into a new way of being missionaries.

“We had a missional conversation about what it means to be a missionary,” Kim Wyatt said.

Essentially it was that they didn’t have to go to the “uttermost parts of the Earth” to minister to those “from the uttermost parts of the Earth,” she said.

The couple saw that “they are also right here and they are our neighbors.”

The Wyatts’ practice in Canada had been to befriend foreigners living in Canada, whether they were academics, students, impoverished refugees or wealthy business executives.

But they quickly saw they could personally build relationships with a limited number of people. So they started involving local Baptist and other churches.

“I say that I am a matchmaker,” Kim Wyatt said. “I match newly arrived folks … with Christians who have probably lived in the same house for 25 years.”

The experience has been transformative. Local Christians built friendships with people from often-stereotyped cultures, while the internationals dispeled myths about Christians learned in their native countries.

Churches have been able to fulfil the biblical value of hospitality for the foreigner and as a result often find themselves transformed as some internationals join their faith and congregations.

“It has revitalized [those] who welcomed what the refugees brought to their churches,” Kim Wyatt said.

Shifting missions paradigm

And that’s what got Hovis’ attention in North Carolina.

During a sabbatical visit with the Hyatts in 2012, Hovis said he saw how some congregations were rejuvenated by their participation in the Wyatts’ work and wondered “could they do the same thing here [that] they did up there?”

The contexts were similar, he added. Canada achieved an advanced post-Christian culture years before the United States, making the Wyatts' approach especially relevant now.

Also relevant is their approach to doing foreign missions domestically.

The old model saw churches send missionaries overseas, with the missionaries being extensions of a church’s programs, Hovis said.

“We traditionally thought of missionaries as working on our behalf in places where we can’t go,” he said. “And occasionally they would host us on mission trips.”

But that doesn’t work anymore — especially as churches experience membership declines and falter financially.

Immigration, meanwhile, has also changed the picture.

“The mission field has come to us and we need to learn how to engage our mission field,” Hovis said. “We can’t do business the way we’ve always done it.”

‘A whole new consciousness’

The Wyatts say embracing that new concept of mission work also means churches transforming how they conceive of ministry.

Embracing internationals, for example, doesn’t mean inviting them to church for coffee or free clothes.

Instead, it means being willing to build relationships — friendships — with all kinds of people from all kinds of places.

“You must be willing to take your passions and be uncomfortable enough to take risks across cultures,” Kim Wyatt said.

It can also mean being OK with meeting an international who is much wealthier than most members of a church.

In the Research Triangle Park, where the Wyatts are focusing, that is highly likely. In addition to refugees being resettled to the area, there also are three major universities with thousands of foreign-born professors and students.

Finding those people in their communities, Marc Wyatt said, means being open and positioned in order to eventually start meeting those who are lonely or in need.

Offering English lessons is one such way. It also requires churches to have an awareness of existing ministries and agencies who already serve those populations, he said.

He added that it takes much more than awareness of cultural differences. It’s about embodying hospitality.

“If our churches become aware of how important the welcome is — welcome into my life — they’ll have a whole new consciousness of what it means to be a missional people,” he said.

]]>

Kim and Marc Wyatt are showing congregations how to engage the world in their own communities.

By Jeff Brumley

International mission work is taking on a whole different look — at least the way it’s being practiced by some Baptists in North Carolina.

And yes, that means in North Carolina, not Uganda or Costa Rica or anywhere else overseas.

It began last year with the arrival of Kim and Marc Wyatt, Cooperative Baptist field personnel who specialize in ministering to refugees, immigrants and other internationals by connecting them with local congregations with the desire and capacity to minister to them.

It’s a big shift and a significant one because it turns the concepts of missions on its head, said Larry Hovis, executive coordinator of CBF of North Carolina.

Instead of congregations sending missionaries overseas to serve those in need, the Wyatts are here to show congregations how to do that right in their own communities, Hovis said.

“Their main job is to equip and energize our congregations to engage in the mission,” he said of the couple who are working in Raleigh. “They are here to teach us and empower us and work alongside us and ultimately to give the ministry away.”

Ministry matchmakers

Still, the Wyatts’ approach is one they developed during several years of international mission work.

The native North Carolinians’ first post was in Thailand. Their next post, in Canada where working with international populations in some of Canada’s largest cities clued them into a new way of being missionaries.

“We had a missional conversation about what it means to be a missionary,” Kim Wyatt said.

Essentially it was that they didn’t have to go to the “uttermost parts of the Earth” to minister to those “from the uttermost parts of the Earth,” she said.

The couple saw that “they are also right here and they are our neighbors.”

The Wyatts’ practice in Canada had been to befriend foreigners living in Canada, whether they were academics, students, impoverished refugees or wealthy business executives.

But they quickly saw they could personally build relationships with a limited number of people. So they started involving local Baptist and other churches.

“I say that I am a matchmaker,” Kim Wyatt said. “I match newly arrived folks … with Christians who have probably lived in the same house for 25 years.”

The experience has been transformative. Local Christians built friendships with people from often-stereotyped cultures, while the internationals dispeled myths about Christians learned in their native countries.

Churches have been able to fulfil the biblical value of hospitality for the foreigner and as a result often find themselves transformed as some internationals join their faith and congregations.

“It has revitalized [those] who welcomed what the refugees brought to their churches,” Kim Wyatt said.

Shifting missions paradigm

And that’s what got Hovis’ attention in North Carolina.

During a sabbatical visit with the Hyatts in 2012, Hovis said he saw how some congregations were rejuvenated by their participation in the Wyatts’ work and wondered “could they do the same thing here [that] they did up there?”

The contexts were similar, he added. Canada achieved an advanced post-Christian culture years before the United States, making the Wyatts' approach especially relevant now.

Also relevant is their approach to doing foreign missions domestically.

The old model saw churches send missionaries overseas, with the missionaries being extensions of a church’s programs, Hovis said.

“We traditionally thought of missionaries as working on our behalf in places where we can’t go,” he said. “And occasionally they would host us on mission trips.”

But that doesn’t work anymore — especially as churches experience membership declines and falter financially.

Immigration, meanwhile, has also changed the picture.

“The mission field has come to us and we need to learn how to engage our mission field,” Hovis said. “We can’t do business the way we’ve always done it.”

‘A whole new consciousness’

The Wyatts say embracing that new concept of mission work also means churches transforming how they conceive of ministry.

Embracing internationals, for example, doesn’t mean inviting them to church for coffee or free clothes.

Instead, it means being willing to build relationships — friendships — with all kinds of people from all kinds of places.

“You must be willing to take your passions and be uncomfortable enough to take risks across cultures,” Kim Wyatt said.

It can also mean being OK with meeting an international who is much wealthier than most members of a church.

In the Research Triangle Park, where the Wyatts are focusing, that is highly likely. In addition to refugees being resettled to the area, there also are three major universities with thousands of foreign-born professors and students.

Finding those people in their communities, Marc Wyatt said, means being open and positioned in order to eventually start meeting those who are lonely or in need.

Offering English lessons is one such way. It also requires churches to have an awareness of existing ministries and agencies who already serve those populations, he said.

Druid Hills Baptist Church in Atlanta has sold nearly 3 acres of its campus to a developer who will build apartments, shops and restaurants, positioning itself for ministries in its thriving urban area.

By Jeff Brumley

Mimi Walker, pastor at Druid Hills Baptist Church in Atlanta, says she never took a course on real estate negotiating while in seminary. In fact, she doesn’t know of any seminaries that offer one.

“But I think they should,” Walker said Tuesday, less than a week after she and the church closed on a deal to sell 3 acres to a developer who plans to build apartments or condominiums on the property.

Pastors need to know how to participate in such arrangements as more churches navigate through membership and financial declines.

“This is a time of transition for churches and I’m not the only one finding myself making changes in property arrangements,” Walker told Baptist News Global.

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship congregation shares a narrative with many of the country’s historic urban churches.

“This was the place to be in the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s,” Walker said. “But by the 50s things were already changing, people were moving to the suburbs and some other things within Atlanta made this area difficult” for churches.

Druid Hills’ membership reached about 3,600 in the 1930s and 1940s, she said. Today it’s around 100.

And it made upkeep on the historic building increasingly difficult.

“Every time you turn around there are more expenses.”

Creative use of assets

Druid Hills’ experience is becoming par for the course for similar congregations.

“I run into that every week,” said Bill Wilson, founder of the North Carolina-based Center for Healthy churches.

Churches like Druid Hills are in urban settings from which most of its traditional membership fled or died. Those left behind are worshiping in buildings that exceed current congregations’ needs and ability to maintain, Wilson said.

“And that is the story of about a third of the churches in the United States.”

On top of that, new and young people in the area usually don’t want to worship in those facilities.

“The local megachurch has drained away all the young adults and they are surrounded by people who think their church doesn’t have anything to offer them,” Wilson said.

While many churches abandoned downtowns and other urban areas with the masses over the decades, those who remained behind now face yet another challenge: “a tidal surge back to the center of the city.”

Resurging downtowns are generating restaurants and nightclubs and other venues all thriving with young people.

What they’re not generating is membership for the struggling churches nearby.

“These urban churches that think they are in this wasteland are slowly discovering here come the people and we’re not prepared for them — and we are going to have to be very creative with how we use our assets,” he said.

But throwing money at splashy worship won’t be enough, he added.

“It’s a changing paradigm of ministry away from the attractional model where you have a good choir and hope people will come,” he said. “Worship style is not a predictor for success.”

What is a predictor of success in drawing young people is service. They want their church to be a conduit for their own social and ministry work in the surrounding communities, according to Wilson.

“They want a meaningful opportunity to make a difference in the world, worship and community,” he said. “People don’t want to come to church just to be entertained — that will be the death of the megachurch.”

But it’s these sorts of issues, as well as challenges around property, that city-center congregations will need to address — and soon.

Caring for communities

Though there are plenty of churches which haven’t been able to make the transition, there are many who have.

One of those is The Church at Clarendon, a Baptist congregation in Arlington, Va., that today has a 10-story tower, including residential units, rising out of its historic church building.

The complex was built after the church leased its air rights to a real estate development firm for 99 years.

Completed in 2012, the facility retained the historic steeple and pillared façade of the former First Baptist Church. The congregation occupies the first two stories with the remaining eight floors of upscale apartments, more than half of which are designated as affordable housing.

The arrangement is one that works for both the church and seminary and for the surrounding community, said Jim Johnson, senior pastor at The Church at Clarendon.

“Two-thirds are affordable housing, which meets the social justice objectives of the church,” Johnson said.

The mixed religious and residential use also provides opportunities to welcome resident and community members into the church’s spaces. Some come downstairs to worship and some have even joined the congregation after doing so, Johnson said.

“All without coercion,” he added.

The church also offers a yoga class open to the public.

“We have really good attendance with the yoga, which … communicates in a larger way that we care about our community,” he said.

Abundant ministry opportunities

Druid Hills has also taken a community-service approach to its revival in conjunction with its property sale.

Over the last decade it has joined forces with the local neighborhood association and a grassroots, faith-based nonprofit agency for work with the homeless and other issues.

It’s also opened a 1928 church building — the structure it is keeping after the recent sale — for arts, dance and yoga exhibits, Walker said.

But some of that is curtailed while the facility undergoes renovations being funded by the sale of the property that included an educational building, parking lots, social hall and kitchen building and two homes. The developer was on the property doing preparation work for the eventual demolition.

“It’s double chaos around here.”

Walker said she’s learned a lot about how the real estate and government worlds work in the past year. It was during those months that the church and developer had to get the property rezoned.

In the meantime, Druid Hills is worshiping with a neighboring Methodist church, alternating Sundays for preaching and readings.

But it will be worth it when the dwellings, shops and restaurants open up in a part of Atlanta that’s already teeming with new residences and businesses.

Druid Hills plans to be ready when that and its own renovations are completed.

“The traffic is going to be terrible, but the opportunity for ministry is going to be great,” Walker said.

— Baptist News Global’s reporting on innovative congregational ministries is part of the Pacesetter Initiative, funded in part by the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation.

]]>

Druid Hills Baptist Church in Atlanta has sold nearly 3 acres of its campus to a developer who will build apartments, shops and restaurants, positioning itself for ministries in its thriving urban area.

By Jeff Brumley

Mimi Walker, pastor at Druid Hills Baptist Church in Atlanta, says she never took a course on real estate negotiating while in seminary. In fact, she doesn’t know of any seminaries that offer one.

“But I think they should,” Walker said Tuesday, less than a week after she and the church closed on a deal to sell 3 acres to a developer who plans to build apartments or condominiums on the property.

Pastors need to know how to participate in such arrangements as more churches navigate through membership and financial declines.

“This is a time of transition for churches and I’m not the only one finding myself making changes in property arrangements,” Walker told Baptist News Global.

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship congregation shares a narrative with many of the country’s historic urban churches.

“This was the place to be in the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s,” Walker said. “But by the 50s things were already changing, people were moving to the suburbs and some other things within Atlanta made this area difficult” for churches.

Druid Hills’ membership reached about 3,600 in the 1930s and 1940s, she said. Today it’s around 100.

And it made upkeep on the historic building increasingly difficult.

“Every time you turn around there are more expenses.”

Creative use of assets

Druid Hills’ experience is becoming par for the course for similar congregations.

“I run into that every week,” said Bill Wilson, founder of the North Carolina-based Center for Healthy churches.

Churches like Druid Hills are in urban settings from which most of its traditional membership fled or died. Those left behind are worshiping in buildings that exceed current congregations’ needs and ability to maintain, Wilson said.

“And that is the story of about a third of the churches in the United States.”

On top of that, new and young people in the area usually don’t want to worship in those facilities.

“The local megachurch has drained away all the young adults and they are surrounded by people who think their church doesn’t have anything to offer them,” Wilson said.

While many churches abandoned downtowns and other urban areas with the masses over the decades, those who remained behind now face yet another challenge: “a tidal surge back to the center of the city.”

Resurging downtowns are generating restaurants and nightclubs and other venues all thriving with young people.

What they’re not generating is membership for the struggling churches nearby.

“These urban churches that think they are in this wasteland are slowly discovering here come the people and we’re not prepared for them — and we are going to have to be very creative with how we use our assets,” he said.

But throwing money at splashy worship won’t be enough, he added.

“It’s a changing paradigm of ministry away from the attractional model where you have a good choir and hope people will come,” he said. “Worship style is not a predictor for success.”

What is a predictor of success in drawing young people is service. They want their church to be a conduit for their own social and ministry work in the surrounding communities, according to Wilson.

“They want a meaningful opportunity to make a difference in the world, worship and community,” he said. “People don’t want to come to church just to be entertained — that will be the death of the megachurch.”

But it’s these sorts of issues, as well as challenges around property, that city-center congregations will need to address — and soon.

Caring for communities

Though there are plenty of churches which haven’t been able to make the transition, there are many who have.

One of those is The Church at Clarendon, a Baptist congregation in Arlington, Va., that today has a 10-story tower, including residential units, rising out of its historic church building.

The complex was built after the church leased its air rights to a real estate development firm for 99 years.

Completed in 2012, the facility retained the historic steeple and pillared façade of the former First Baptist Church. The congregation occupies the first two stories with the remaining eight floors of upscale apartments, more than half of which are designated as affordable housing.

The arrangement is one that works for both the church and seminary and for the surrounding community, said Jim Johnson, senior pastor at The Church at Clarendon.

“Two-thirds are affordable housing, which meets the social justice objectives of the church,” Johnson said.

The mixed religious and residential use also provides opportunities to welcome resident and community members into the church’s spaces. Some come downstairs to worship and some have even joined the congregation after doing so, Johnson said.

“All without coercion,” he added.

The church also offers a yoga class open to the public.

“We have really good attendance with the yoga, which … communicates in a larger way that we care about our community,” he said.

Abundant ministry opportunities

Druid Hills has also taken a community-service approach to its revival in conjunction with its property sale.

Over the last decade it has joined forces with the local neighborhood association and a grassroots, faith-based nonprofit agency for work with the homeless and other issues.

It’s also opened a 1928 church building — the structure it is keeping after the recent sale — for arts, dance and yoga exhibits, Walker said.

But some of that is curtailed while the facility undergoes renovations being funded by the sale of the property that included an educational building, parking lots, social hall and kitchen building and two homes. The developer was on the property doing preparation work for the eventual demolition.

“It’s double chaos around here.”

Walker said she’s learned a lot about how the real estate and government worlds work in the past year. It was during those months that the church and developer had to get the property rezoned.

In the meantime, Druid Hills is worshiping with a neighboring Methodist church, alternating Sundays for preaching and readings.

But it will be worth it when the dwellings, shops and restaurants open up in a part of Atlanta that’s already teeming with new residences and businesses.

Druid Hills plans to be ready when that and its own renovations are completed.

“The traffic is going to be terrible, but the opportunity for ministry is going to be great,” Walker said.

— Baptist News Global’s reporting on innovative congregational ministries is part of the Pacesetter Initiative, funded in part by the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation.

Facing financial challenges due to years of membership declines, Hillcrest Baptist Church in Mobile, Ala., has agreed to gift its property to Volunteers of America in exchange for continuing to worship there.

By Jeff Brumley

Challenged by financial and membership declines, some congregations choose merger and some become satellite campuses while others sell to developers or simply close the doors and turn off the lights.

Instead, the once-thriving church on the city’s west side has voted to gift its 4 1/2 –acre campus to Volunteers of America Southeast in exchange for worshiping there for free and for as long as they choose.

And they’ll be worshiping in style after VOA pays off the mortgage, has the campus landscaped and performs about $100,000 in long-overdue renovations.

“We’re getting more than a fair shake on this,” said Edie Daugherty, a current and founding member of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship church.

‘No idea what to do’

But none of it has come easily, said Greg Shoemaker, the pastor at Hillcrest.

While the process that led to the VOA deal began just over a year ago, Hillcrests’ challenges began much before that — in fact not long after its first full-time pastor, George Mason, departed for Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas in 1989.

Membership reached around 300 at that time but then began to decline steadily as the church saw a series of full- and part-time pastors come and go. Two splits also took their toll, Shoemaker said.

As the years went by, Shoemaker said, the congregation began to realize it faced the dilemma of being in a building far bigger than its now 40-member congregation required.

“It’s teaching congregations to separate the church from the real estate — and that’s far easier said than done,” Shoemaker said.

Hillcrest did finally learn that tough lesson, he said.

“They’re a great Christian, God-loving people, but they just had no idea what to do,” he said.

It also took time.

“This has been a tough process — and it’s been tough on them,” he said.

‘A church needs to be there’

The process was also complex and fraught with uncertainty.

One idea the congregation considered was gifting Hillcrest to another church. “The problem was, there are only two CBF churches in Mobile,” Shoemaker said.

Then there were commercial interests in the roughly $1.5 million property. That included a funeral home.

“But that just didn’t seem right,” he said. “Everybody said, whatever we do, a church needs to be there.”

Because several small congregations were renting space from Hillcrest, some thought the church could become a ministry incubator.

“But the problem was we would need a property manager to use the space and do a lot of renovations,” he said. That wasn’t affordable.

Then VOA expressed interest and eventually offered the all-expenses-paid deal. For a congregation with about a $90,000 a year budget, saving $30,000 to $40,000 in building upkeep annually was a huge gain.

“Now the church can put those dollars into ministry,” Shoemaker said. “They’re excited.”

‘Another dimension of service’

VOA officials said they are excited, too.

The organization will spend the next year renovating the building and preparing the grounds to become its corporate offices for VOA Southeast, which covers Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi.

It will also move its current ministry center and eventually launch its first hands-on ministry center on the property.

VOA, which considers itself a church dedicated to helping other churches, provides services such as housing and senior care and other social services.

“I see it adding another dimension to the services we are currently providing,” said Wallace T. Davis, president and CEO of VOA Southeast.

The organization, which has no similar arrangements with any other churches, has helped just one developing church before. The center will be its first full-blown venture into that kind of ministry, Davis said.

It won’t be a simple rental arrangement when ministries are using the Hillcrest site. In addition to space, Davis said he envisions coaches and mentors helping congregations and ministers learn to provide community-based ministries.

The agency also expressed gratitude that Hillcrest’s congregation will remain on the site.

‘Key, shaping events’

George Mason said he’s also grateful for that.

“I think it sounds like good stewardship on their part,” he said. “I love those people, and I’m grateful” the congregation is remaining on the property.

Mason said he’s had a fondness for Hillcrest because the congregation stood bravely for progressive causes in a time and place when few Baptists did.

During his four years in the pulpit there Hillcrest began electing women deacons. It also took progressive, public stances on education and other issues in Mobile.

“We began to grow and reached a point of about 250 in attendance,” Mason said.

“Those were key, shaping events for me,” he added.

Shoemaker said he also learned much from his tenure at Hillcrest, which began in August 2013.

A bivocational pastor who had helped an aging Mississippi congregation gift its building to a younger church, he and Hillcrest members quickly saw their situation as unsustainable.

Hillcrest had only another year to pay off its mortgage and had money in reserves. But membership was dropping.

“It was revitalization or merger or the math would catch up with the congregation,” he said.

Shoemaker said he will not be staying on with the church after the deal with VOA closes sometime this month.

That’s so he can focus on his full-time job in health care administration.

While it was a challenging tenure, he said he’s glad the congregation is set up for the future.

“The mood around the church has improved since the uncertainty is gone,” he said.

Looking to the future

Dougherty said she’s been optimistic about the church’s future — even when she didn’t know what it was.

But she did know all along that any solution the church found would have to involve staying in their building.

Much of the relief at Hillcrest comes from acceptance of their situation, she added.

“We realized we were never going to be the great big church we once were,” Dougherty said. “And now we are looking at what we need to do.”

]]>

Facing financial challenges due to years of membership declines, Hillcrest Baptist Church in Mobile, Ala., has agreed to gift its property to Volunteers of America in exchange for continuing to worship there.

By Jeff Brumley

Challenged by financial and membership declines, some congregations choose merger and some become satellite campuses while others sell to developers or simply close the doors and turn off the lights.

Instead, the once-thriving church on the city’s west side has voted to gift its 4 1/2 –acre campus to Volunteers of America Southeast in exchange for worshiping there for free and for as long as they choose.

And they’ll be worshiping in style after VOA pays off the mortgage, has the campus landscaped and performs about $100,000 in long-overdue renovations.

“We’re getting more than a fair shake on this,” said Edie Daugherty, a current and founding member of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship church.

‘No idea what to do’

But none of it has come easily, said Greg Shoemaker, the pastor at Hillcrest.

While the process that led to the VOA deal began just over a year ago, Hillcrests’ challenges began much before that — in fact not long after its first full-time pastor, George Mason, departed for Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas in 1989.

Membership reached around 300 at that time but then began to decline steadily as the church saw a series of full- and part-time pastors come and go. Two splits also took their toll, Shoemaker said.

As the years went by, Shoemaker said, the congregation began to realize it faced the dilemma of being in a building far bigger than its now 40-member congregation required.

“It’s teaching congregations to separate the church from the real estate — and that’s far easier said than done,” Shoemaker said.

Hillcrest did finally learn that tough lesson, he said.

“They’re a great Christian, God-loving people, but they just had no idea what to do,” he said.

It also took time.

“This has been a tough process — and it’s been tough on them,” he said.

‘A church needs to be there’

The process was also complex and fraught with uncertainty.

One idea the congregation considered was gifting Hillcrest to another church. “The problem was, there are only two CBF churches in Mobile,” Shoemaker said.

Then there were commercial interests in the roughly $1.5 million property. That included a funeral home.

“But that just didn’t seem right,” he said. “Everybody said, whatever we do, a church needs to be there.”

Because several small congregations were renting space from Hillcrest, some thought the church could become a ministry incubator.

“But the problem was we would need a property manager to use the space and do a lot of renovations,” he said. That wasn’t affordable.

Then VOA expressed interest and eventually offered the all-expenses-paid deal. For a congregation with about a $90,000 a year budget, saving $30,000 to $40,000 in building upkeep annually was a huge gain.

“Now the church can put those dollars into ministry,” Shoemaker said. “They’re excited.”

‘Another dimension of service’

VOA officials said they are excited, too.

The organization will spend the next year renovating the building and preparing the grounds to become its corporate offices for VOA Southeast, which covers Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi.

It will also move its current ministry center and eventually launch its first hands-on ministry center on the property.

VOA, which considers itself a church dedicated to helping other churches, provides services such as housing and senior care and other social services.

“I see it adding another dimension to the services we are currently providing,” said Wallace T. Davis, president and CEO of VOA Southeast.

The organization, which has no similar arrangements with any other churches, has helped just one developing church before. The center will be its first full-blown venture into that kind of ministry, Davis said.

It won’t be a simple rental arrangement when ministries are using the Hillcrest site. In addition to space, Davis said he envisions coaches and mentors helping congregations and ministers learn to provide community-based ministries.

The agency also expressed gratitude that Hillcrest’s congregation will remain on the site.

‘Key, shaping events’

George Mason said he’s also grateful for that.

“I think it sounds like good stewardship on their part,” he said. “I love those people, and I’m grateful” the congregation is remaining on the property.

Mason said he’s had a fondness for Hillcrest because the congregation stood bravely for progressive causes in a time and place when few Baptists did.

During his four years in the pulpit there Hillcrest began electing women deacons. It also took progressive, public stances on education and other issues in Mobile.

“We began to grow and reached a point of about 250 in attendance,” Mason said.

“Those were key, shaping events for me,” he added.

Shoemaker said he also learned much from his tenure at Hillcrest, which began in August 2013.

A bivocational pastor who had helped an aging Mississippi congregation gift its building to a younger church, he and Hillcrest members quickly saw their situation as unsustainable.

Hillcrest had only another year to pay off its mortgage and had money in reserves. But membership was dropping.

“It was revitalization or merger or the math would catch up with the congregation,” he said.

Shoemaker said he will not be staying on with the church after the deal with VOA closes sometime this month.

That’s so he can focus on his full-time job in health care administration.

While it was a challenging tenure, he said he’s glad the congregation is set up for the future.

“The mood around the church has improved since the uncertainty is gone,” he said.

Looking to the future

Dougherty said she’s been optimistic about the church’s future — even when she didn’t know what it was.

But she did know all along that any solution the church found would have to involve staying in their building.

Several Baptist churches brought food, presents and the gospel to those who need it most in Texas border towns.

By George Henson

Baptist churches and ministries recently joined forces to provide food and Christmas spirit to impoverished families along the U.S.-Mexico border. Their goal: to prevent as much hunger and despair as possible among the region’s adults and children facing hardship as Dec. 25 approached.

“I don’t care how much effort you have to put in it, it makes it all worth it to see the gratitude and the need of the people you are helping,” said Perry Rollins, a member of Glen Meadows Baptist Church in San Angelo, Texas. Rollins also runs a ministry providing venison for a number of Mexican orphanages.

The “Taking Christmas to the Border” mission trip was waged by several Concho Valley Baptist Association churches, along with a congregation from Lubbock, Texas. Their focus was on Del Rio and Eagle Pass on the Rio Grande.

The group also delivered about 800 pounds of ground venison and 200 pounds of ground zebra. Jim Roche, one of the leaders of the mission group from Glen Meadows Baptist Church, is a hunting guide and trophy hunters donated the meat.

Many of those hunters from around the country not only donated venison, but also provided money to pay the way of people who wanted to go on the mission trip but could not afford it.

Director of missions Jeff Box ground some of the meat.

“It’s exciting to see them doing things like this,” said Box. “Our goal for the association is all of us coming together and joining hands where we can to build the kingdom.”

The team also held a concert, cookout and a gospel crusade twice in Del Rio — at the city amphitheater in the afternoon and at La Esperanza that evening — and again Sunday at a block party in Eagle Pass.

Organizers wanted to provide food “and at the same time, give them the gospel, give them some hope,” said Adam Rodriguez, youth minister at Oasis Baptist Church in San Angelo. They wanted to let “them know that people care and that there is a church where they live that wants to help them.”

All remaining food was donated to Loaves and Fishes Food Bank directed by Gisela Lenz, which feeds more than 1,500 families a month.

The Texas Baptist Men disaster relief food service unit in San Angelo provided all the paper goods for the cookouts, as well as the use of their trailer and a case of chili for hot dogs.

Randy Balderaz led a group of university students from Alliance Baptist Church in Lubbock to provide the contemporary music concert. Youth team members also painted faces, incorporating a gospel witness to their artwork.

The group delivered 1,000 Bibles — 400 of them in Spanish.

They brought toys for the children.

“Our purpose is to share the true meaning of Christmas,” Roche said.

Scheduling the events at the churches was intentional, he added. “Hopefully, it will also give the churches a little bump,” Roche said.

Organizers also expected the trip to make an impact on those who ministered, he added.

“We’re so blessed that we don’t know what it is to be hungry,” Roche said. “You go down there, and you will see the face of hunger. You will see the faces of children who are scared because they don’t know where their next meal is going to come from.”

Scott Weddell, a deacon at Water Valley Baptist Church in Water Valley, agrees. His great-niece recently was baptized, and he saw transformation begin when she served in the ministry last year. The first year they went to the border, only three volunteers from his church — he, his wife and great-niece — participated. This year, eight from the congregation of about 30 planned to go.

]]>

Several Baptist churches brought food, presents and the gospel to those who need it most in Texas border towns.

By George Henson

Baptist churches and ministries recently joined forces to provide food and Christmas spirit to impoverished families along the U.S.-Mexico border. Their goal: to prevent as much hunger and despair as possible among the region’s adults and children facing hardship as Dec. 25 approached.

“I don’t care how much effort you have to put in it, it makes it all worth it to see the gratitude and the need of the people you are helping,” said Perry Rollins, a member of Glen Meadows Baptist Church in San Angelo, Texas. Rollins also runs a ministry providing venison for a number of Mexican orphanages.

The “Taking Christmas to the Border” mission trip was waged by several Concho Valley Baptist Association churches, along with a congregation from Lubbock, Texas. Their focus was on Del Rio and Eagle Pass on the Rio Grande.

The group also delivered about 800 pounds of ground venison and 200 pounds of ground zebra. Jim Roche, one of the leaders of the mission group from Glen Meadows Baptist Church, is a hunting guide and trophy hunters donated the meat.

Many of those hunters from around the country not only donated venison, but also provided money to pay the way of people who wanted to go on the mission trip but could not afford it.

Director of missions Jeff Box ground some of the meat.

“It’s exciting to see them doing things like this,” said Box. “Our goal for the association is all of us coming together and joining hands where we can to build the kingdom.”

The team also held a concert, cookout and a gospel crusade twice in Del Rio — at the city amphitheater in the afternoon and at La Esperanza that evening — and again Sunday at a block party in Eagle Pass.

Organizers wanted to provide food “and at the same time, give them the gospel, give them some hope,” said Adam Rodriguez, youth minister at Oasis Baptist Church in San Angelo. They wanted to let “them know that people care and that there is a church where they live that wants to help them.”

All remaining food was donated to Loaves and Fishes Food Bank directed by Gisela Lenz, which feeds more than 1,500 families a month.

The Texas Baptist Men disaster relief food service unit in San Angelo provided all the paper goods for the cookouts, as well as the use of their trailer and a case of chili for hot dogs.

Randy Balderaz led a group of university students from Alliance Baptist Church in Lubbock to provide the contemporary music concert. Youth team members also painted faces, incorporating a gospel witness to their artwork.

The group delivered 1,000 Bibles — 400 of them in Spanish.

They brought toys for the children.

“Our purpose is to share the true meaning of Christmas,” Roche said.

Scheduling the events at the churches was intentional, he added. “Hopefully, it will also give the churches a little bump,” Roche said.

Organizers also expected the trip to make an impact on those who ministered, he added.

“We’re so blessed that we don’t know what it is to be hungry,” Roche said. “You go down there, and you will see the face of hunger. You will see the faces of children who are scared because they don’t know where their next meal is going to come from.”

Scott Weddell, a deacon at Water Valley Baptist Church in Water Valley, agrees. His great-niece recently was baptized, and he saw transformation begin when she served in the ministry last year. The first year they went to the border, only three volunteers from his church — he, his wife and great-niece — participated. This year, eight from the congregation of about 30 planned to go.

A new ministry model is showing results in a beleagured Dallas neighborhood, where innovative ministries and programs are sparking transformation in crime rates, health care and education.

By Terry Goodrich

A new model of ministry that empowers residents in an at-risk neighborhood of Dallas to transform their communities has resulted in crime reduction, better meeting of health needs, more jobs and improved student academic performance, according to research by Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion.

A report on the two-year case study of a new, collaborative approach to urban blight — “Community Transformation in West Dallas: A Sustained Collective Among Churches, Faith-based Organizations, Nonprofits and Governments” — was presented to community, government and business leaders Nov. 6 at Communities Foundation of Texas.

The research on the 11.5-square-mile area is based on a return-of-investment analysis and measurement of outcome-driven efforts of Serve West Dallas, a nonprofit collaborative organization founded in 2009 and including faith-based nonprofits, urban and suburban churches, residents, community nonprofits, private enterprises and governments.

“The idea of a backbone organization to support a collaborative of nonprofits is a stroke of genius and is what tends to be missing in so many efforts around the country to transform blighted communities,” said lead researcher Byron Johnson, co-director of Baylor’s Institute for Studies of Religion. Since its founding, Serve West Dallas has achieved what one ministry partner calls a “more holistic, less piecemeal approach to ministry.”

Aside from changing lives for the better, “the economic impact alone of the SWD collaborative is a finding that is of significant interest to government and business leaders, as well as other community stakeholders,” Johnson said.

The “logic model” of the approach — which tracks resources, activities and outcomes of ministry partners’ efforts — is “an important step for us, individually as ministry partners and collectively,” said Scott Hanson, executive director of SWD. “It helps us communicate what we’re about and provides a road map for future data collection activity.”

The motto of visionary community leaders in West Dallas — “More could be accomplished if we work together than apart’’ — in practical terms translates to regular meetings of partners, collective goal-setting, coordination to ensure efforts are not overlapping or competitive and tracking progress through spiritual, social, physical and economic impact.

Today, 13 ministry partners that compose SWD are working jointly to transform West Dallas. Some of their success stories include:

Safer neighborhoods. This effort educates citizens about their rights to live in a safe neighborhood and connects them with volunteer lawyers. Using the justice system, lawyers representing 20 families in two West Dallas neighborhoods shut down 17 “drug houses” from 2009-2012 through court order or settlement. Offending properties were demolished, rehabilitated, sold or forced to evict criminal tenants. During that period:

• Index crime rates dropped 49 percent.• Estimated savings totaled more than $2 million, based on improved tax revenues, improved property values, reduced crime and reduced maintenance costs.• 83 percent of diabetics who attended healthy living classes successfully managed their blood sugar levels, compared with 36 percent of those who did not attend classes.• 40 percent of those attending exercise classes lowered their body mass index so that they were no longer overweight or obese, compared with 6 percent of those who did so without the exercise class.• Extrapolated savings totaled more than $2 million, based on savings from diabetes management, hypertension management, prevention of flu cases and otherwise improved health status.

A faith-based community clinic for the uninsured. This clinic sees an average of 72 unique visitors weekly for a total of about 110 encounters. It offers flu shots, diagnoses for diabetes and hypertension and nutritious free meals on a weekly or monthly basis. A random sampling from August 2013 to August 2014 showed that:

• A number of unemployed residents in West Dallas have obtained jobs through joint efforts of SWD church and ministry partners with a community restoration entity and several Dallas area employers.• A mentoring program for youths pairs Christian mentors with youths in a poverty-stricken neighborhood, focusing on mentoring, sports and vocational/educational training. Researchers obtained data for students in about one-third of the mentor relationships, determining which students were at or above grade level in reading and math and which had been designated as “at risk” for graduating high school.

SWD projects on the horizon range from mentoring expectant teens to training future seminarians in how to plant churches.

“This collective effort has not always been easy,” Johnson said. “The challenges and obstacles to community transformation are so formidable in impoverished and disadvantaged areas.”

He added that partnerships are needed not only between local ministries but also with secular organizations and businesses.

“But SWD is a reminder that alliances between urban and suburban congregations can be a catalyst to build and sustain community transformation.”

]]>

A new ministry model is showing results in a beleagured Dallas neighborhood, where innovative ministries and programs are sparking transformation in crime rates, health care and education.

By Terry Goodrich

A new model of ministry that empowers residents in an at-risk neighborhood of Dallas to transform their communities has resulted in crime reduction, better meeting of health needs, more jobs and improved student academic performance, according to research by Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion.

A report on the two-year case study of a new, collaborative approach to urban blight — “Community Transformation in West Dallas: A Sustained Collective Among Churches, Faith-based Organizations, Nonprofits and Governments” — was presented to community, government and business leaders Nov. 6 at Communities Foundation of Texas.

The research on the 11.5-square-mile area is based on a return-of-investment analysis and measurement of outcome-driven efforts of Serve West Dallas, a nonprofit collaborative organization founded in 2009 and including faith-based nonprofits, urban and suburban churches, residents, community nonprofits, private enterprises and governments.

“The idea of a backbone organization to support a collaborative of nonprofits is a stroke of genius and is what tends to be missing in so many efforts around the country to transform blighted communities,” said lead researcher Byron Johnson, co-director of Baylor’s Institute for Studies of Religion. Since its founding, Serve West Dallas has achieved what one ministry partner calls a “more holistic, less piecemeal approach to ministry.”

Aside from changing lives for the better, “the economic impact alone of the SWD collaborative is a finding that is of significant interest to government and business leaders, as well as other community stakeholders,” Johnson said.

The “logic model” of the approach — which tracks resources, activities and outcomes of ministry partners’ efforts — is “an important step for us, individually as ministry partners and collectively,” said Scott Hanson, executive director of SWD. “It helps us communicate what we’re about and provides a road map for future data collection activity.”

The motto of visionary community leaders in West Dallas — “More could be accomplished if we work together than apart’’ — in practical terms translates to regular meetings of partners, collective goal-setting, coordination to ensure efforts are not overlapping or competitive and tracking progress through spiritual, social, physical and economic impact.

Today, 13 ministry partners that compose SWD are working jointly to transform West Dallas. Some of their success stories include:

Safer neighborhoods. This effort educates citizens about their rights to live in a safe neighborhood and connects them with volunteer lawyers. Using the justice system, lawyers representing 20 families in two West Dallas neighborhoods shut down 17 “drug houses” from 2009-2012 through court order or settlement. Offending properties were demolished, rehabilitated, sold or forced to evict criminal tenants. During that period:

• Index crime rates dropped 49 percent.• Estimated savings totaled more than $2 million, based on improved tax revenues, improved property values, reduced crime and reduced maintenance costs.• 83 percent of diabetics who attended healthy living classes successfully managed their blood sugar levels, compared with 36 percent of those who did not attend classes.• 40 percent of those attending exercise classes lowered their body mass index so that they were no longer overweight or obese, compared with 6 percent of those who did so without the exercise class.• Extrapolated savings totaled more than $2 million, based on savings from diabetes management, hypertension management, prevention of flu cases and otherwise improved health status.

A faith-based community clinic for the uninsured. This clinic sees an average of 72 unique visitors weekly for a total of about 110 encounters. It offers flu shots, diagnoses for diabetes and hypertension and nutritious free meals on a weekly or monthly basis. A random sampling from August 2013 to August 2014 showed that:

• A number of unemployed residents in West Dallas have obtained jobs through joint efforts of SWD church and ministry partners with a community restoration entity and several Dallas area employers.• A mentoring program for youths pairs Christian mentors with youths in a poverty-stricken neighborhood, focusing on mentoring, sports and vocational/educational training. Researchers obtained data for students in about one-third of the mentor relationships, determining which students were at or above grade level in reading and math and which had been designated as “at risk” for graduating high school.

SWD projects on the horizon range from mentoring expectant teens to training future seminarians in how to plant churches.

“This collective effort has not always been easy,” Johnson said. “The challenges and obstacles to community transformation are so formidable in impoverished and disadvantaged areas.”

He added that partnerships are needed not only between local ministries but also with secular organizations and businesses.

“But SWD is a reminder that alliances between urban and suburban congregations can be a catalyst to build and sustain community transformation.”

]]>Terry GoodrichOrganizationsMon, 17 Nov 2014 13:49:38 -0500If you really want to make your pastor’s dayhttp://baptistnews.com/opinion/commentaries/item/29420-if-you-really-want-to-make-your-pastor-s-day
http://baptistnews.com/opinion/commentaries/item/29420-if-you-really-want-to-make-your-pastor-s-dayHow about faithful participation in the life of the church?

By Barry Howard

Recently, as more and more cards and notes appeared in my inbox, in my mailbox and on my desk, all thanking me for serving as their minister, I began to wonder if someone had announced my retirement without my knowledge, or if I looked a little discouraged and folks were just trying to lift my spirits. In my momentary amnesia, I had forgotten that October is promoted by many as Pastor Appreciation Month.

Through the years I have been blessed to “feel” appreciated by the core membership of the congregations I have served. But I’m pretty sure that is not the universal experience of pastors. I am told by my counselor friends that many clergy are highly discouraged and often teeter on the brink of depression.

I readily acknowledge that there are a few slackers among us, as there are in every career field, but most of the pastors I know work hard and feel a deep sense of responsibility for their flock. Because the multiple roles within the pastoral vocation uniquely initiate a minister into almost every conceivable life situation (as well as a few inconceivable ones), a pastor’s work from one day to the next can fluctuate between affirmation and discouragement.

Although the biblical job description of a pastor portrays one who is called to “nurture, lead and guide,” in our culture of hyper-mobility and competing loyalties, ministry can seem more like “herding cats” than “shepherding sheep.”

What is the best way to show appreciation to your pastor? Included in the stack of cards I have received, there is a Starbucks gift card, pictures drawn by a children’s Sunday school class and hand-written notes thanking me for “that time when” I was there when grandpa passed away, when junior got married or when the baby was born. Through the years I have been the recipient of all kinds of tokens of appreciation, including jars of homemade jam, home-canned pickles, home-cooked cakes and pies, fresh baked bread or garden-picked vegetables.

While I can’t speak for every pastor, here is what makes me feel the most appreciated: Faithful participation in the life of the church. For me, nothing can be quite as emotionally deflating as working hard all week, then getting to church on Sunday to discover that a high percentage of my flock is at the beach, on the boat, in the mountains, on the golf course, at the soccer game or just sleeping in. And nothing can be quite as encouraging as working hard all week, and getting to church to see a faithful congregation of believers who have gathered to worship God.

Early in my ministry, I suppose I took it for granted that church members would be fairly faithful, especially in worship and Bible study. Now, even among historically devoted church members, participation in the life of the church is too often determined by convenience than by conviction and commitment.

This is Pastor Appreciation Month. Your pastor will appreciate your cards and notes, and jams and jellies. But if you really want your pastor to feel appreciated, be an active and faithful participant in your spiritual community. When I witness someone get connected and engaged in the synergy of God’s mission through the church, as a pastor, that makes my day.

]]>How about faithful participation in the life of the church?

By Barry Howard

Recently, as more and more cards and notes appeared in my inbox, in my mailbox and on my desk, all thanking me for serving as their minister, I began to wonder if someone had announced my retirement without my knowledge, or if I looked a little discouraged and folks were just trying to lift my spirits. In my momentary amnesia, I had forgotten that October is promoted by many as Pastor Appreciation Month.

Through the years I have been blessed to “feel” appreciated by the core membership of the congregations I have served. But I’m pretty sure that is not the universal experience of pastors. I am told by my counselor friends that many clergy are highly discouraged and often teeter on the brink of depression.

I readily acknowledge that there are a few slackers among us, as there are in every career field, but most of the pastors I know work hard and feel a deep sense of responsibility for their flock. Because the multiple roles within the pastoral vocation uniquely initiate a minister into almost every conceivable life situation (as well as a few inconceivable ones), a pastor’s work from one day to the next can fluctuate between affirmation and discouragement.

Although the biblical job description of a pastor portrays one who is called to “nurture, lead and guide,” in our culture of hyper-mobility and competing loyalties, ministry can seem more like “herding cats” than “shepherding sheep.”

What is the best way to show appreciation to your pastor? Included in the stack of cards I have received, there is a Starbucks gift card, pictures drawn by a children’s Sunday school class and hand-written notes thanking me for “that time when” I was there when grandpa passed away, when junior got married or when the baby was born. Through the years I have been the recipient of all kinds of tokens of appreciation, including jars of homemade jam, home-canned pickles, home-cooked cakes and pies, fresh baked bread or garden-picked vegetables.

While I can’t speak for every pastor, here is what makes me feel the most appreciated: Faithful participation in the life of the church. For me, nothing can be quite as emotionally deflating as working hard all week, then getting to church on Sunday to discover that a high percentage of my flock is at the beach, on the boat, in the mountains, on the golf course, at the soccer game or just sleeping in. And nothing can be quite as encouraging as working hard all week, and getting to church to see a faithful congregation of believers who have gathered to worship God.

Early in my ministry, I suppose I took it for granted that church members would be fairly faithful, especially in worship and Bible study. Now, even among historically devoted church members, participation in the life of the church is too often determined by convenience than by conviction and commitment.

This is Pastor Appreciation Month. Your pastor will appreciate your cards and notes, and jams and jellies. But if you really want your pastor to feel appreciated, be an active and faithful participant in your spiritual community. When I witness someone get connected and engaged in the synergy of God’s mission through the church, as a pastor, that makes my day.

Burl Cain of the Louisiana State Penitentiary believes congregations can be change agents.

By Ken Camp

A Louisiana prison warden known for pioneering faith-based programs wants to see urban and suburban churches work in partnership to reintegrate ex-offenders into society and minister to inmates’ children.

“We want to make the urban church into the agent for change it ought to be,” Burl Cain, warden of Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, said at a recent restorative justice ministry conference in Dallas.

Cain has seen transformation occur inside Angola — a 73 percent decline in violent incidents — since he arrived in 1995 at what was called “the nation’s bloodiest prison.”

After 14 years as warden of Louisiana’s Dixon Correctional Institute, he concluded traditional approaches in the correctional system had failed, and he committed to trying something different at Angola.

“I don’t do traditional. If it doesn’t make sense, I don’t do it,” Cain told the conference.

Angola sought to give hope and purpose to inmates serving life-without-parole sentences by equipping them to serve as teachers in a wide variety of educational and vocations classes — from auto mechanics to welding, to carpentry, to culinary arts.

The programs went a long way toward changing the attitude of men serving life sentences, and the job placement rate for ex-offenders in the program rose. Still, Cain realized rehabilitation requires a change of heart.

“If you teach people skills and trades without the moral component, you just made a smarter criminal. You have to change the person. Criminals are selfish people. They don’t care about you or your feelings. They do what they want and take what they want. Moral people do not do that. So, the cure for that problem is the moral component, and that’s found in religion.”

Cain worked with New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary’s Leavell College to launch an extension center at the prison that offers Bible college degrees. Prisoners are required to complete the Experiencing God discipleship program as a prerequisite to the classes the seminary offers, he noted.

Angola recently received private funding for an 11,000-square-foot building that will house classes offered by the seminary, Cain reported.

Angola also built two large chapels — a “nondenominational Catholic chapel” constructed in 38 days using inmate labor and funded by donations from Mexico and a “nondenominational Protestant chapel,” he said.

But beyond worship services led by prison ministry volunteers from outside the prison, Angola also houses Bible college graduates who serve congregations within the prison.

“We have 27 churches in Angola with inmate preachers,” Cain said.

In 2005, Angola prison worked with the AWANA ministry to launch Malachi Dads — a program to help incarcerated fathers who have experienced spiritual transformation reconnect with their children. The initiative takes its name from the Old Testament prophet’s promise God will “turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers.”

The program focuses on breaking the cycle of criminal behavior by equipping Christian fathers in prison to leave a godly legacy to their children, Cain explained.

Many of the children of inmates live in urban areas, but for inner-city churches to make an impact on their lives and the lives of ex-offenders who re-enter society, they need suburban churches to stand alongside them to provide volunteer and financial support, Cain insisted.

Burl Cain of the Louisiana State Penitentiary believes congregations can be change agents.

By Ken Camp

A Louisiana prison warden known for pioneering faith-based programs wants to see urban and suburban churches work in partnership to reintegrate ex-offenders into society and minister to inmates’ children.

“We want to make the urban church into the agent for change it ought to be,” Burl Cain, warden of Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, said at a recent restorative justice ministry conference in Dallas.

Cain has seen transformation occur inside Angola — a 73 percent decline in violent incidents — since he arrived in 1995 at what was called “the nation’s bloodiest prison.”

After 14 years as warden of Louisiana’s Dixon Correctional Institute, he concluded traditional approaches in the correctional system had failed, and he committed to trying something different at Angola.

“I don’t do traditional. If it doesn’t make sense, I don’t do it,” Cain told the conference.

Angola sought to give hope and purpose to inmates serving life-without-parole sentences by equipping them to serve as teachers in a wide variety of educational and vocations classes — from auto mechanics to welding, to carpentry, to culinary arts.

The programs went a long way toward changing the attitude of men serving life sentences, and the job placement rate for ex-offenders in the program rose. Still, Cain realized rehabilitation requires a change of heart.

“If you teach people skills and trades without the moral component, you just made a smarter criminal. You have to change the person. Criminals are selfish people. They don’t care about you or your feelings. They do what they want and take what they want. Moral people do not do that. So, the cure for that problem is the moral component, and that’s found in religion.”

Cain worked with New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary’s Leavell College to launch an extension center at the prison that offers Bible college degrees. Prisoners are required to complete the Experiencing God discipleship program as a prerequisite to the classes the seminary offers, he noted.

Angola recently received private funding for an 11,000-square-foot building that will house classes offered by the seminary, Cain reported.

Angola also built two large chapels — a “nondenominational Catholic chapel” constructed in 38 days using inmate labor and funded by donations from Mexico and a “nondenominational Protestant chapel,” he said.

But beyond worship services led by prison ministry volunteers from outside the prison, Angola also houses Bible college graduates who serve congregations within the prison.

“We have 27 churches in Angola with inmate preachers,” Cain said.

In 2005, Angola prison worked with the AWANA ministry to launch Malachi Dads — a program to help incarcerated fathers who have experienced spiritual transformation reconnect with their children. The initiative takes its name from the Old Testament prophet’s promise God will “turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers.”

The program focuses on breaking the cycle of criminal behavior by equipping Christian fathers in prison to leave a godly legacy to their children, Cain explained.

Many of the children of inmates live in urban areas, but for inner-city churches to make an impact on their lives and the lives of ex-offenders who re-enter society, they need suburban churches to stand alongside them to provide volunteer and financial support, Cain insisted.

Returning over many years to the same mission destination reaps huge benefits for those going and those welcoming, say Baptist groups in Virginia and Tennessee.

By Jeff Brumley

Even the Oglala Lakota Sioux who haven’t embraced Christianity live out gospel values such as family, charity and self-sacrifice, Tennessean Sean Prince says.

Prince is the organizer of an annual mission trip to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota for his congregation, First Baptist Church of Murfreesboro, Tenn. They’ve visited the same reservation, and the same communities within it, for six summers.

Going back repeatedly, Prince said, has enabled him and others to see first-hand how Native American culture is built on helping and trusting others regardless of personal circumstances.

“And that resonates with me,” Prince said.

It’s taken multiple trips to the same site to fully appreciate the qualities of Native American culture, he added.

“Each year we are touched in ways that are fully unexpected,” he said. “We fully acknowledge that we are more so the beneficiaries of the trip than they are.”

‘Beyond charitable response’

Prince’s observation reflects a trend sweeping American churches, Baptist and otherwise, away from the one-time-visit mission trips to the keep-coming-back variety.

Ministry leaders in locations receiving the visits, as well as those traveling say it’s a better use of money, sweat and love to focus on one project and place over many years.

And the idea has a firm footing already among major Christian organizations as well as individual churches.

“One of the things WMU wanted to do was move beyond the charitable response — the giving of a fish,” said Maria Lynn, adult missions coordinator for Woman’s Missionary Union of Virginia, based in Richmond.

The previous model accomplished a lot of good through efforts such as clothing and feeding programs, Lynn said.

“But we were praying how we could do more empowering kinds of ministries — teaching them to fish,” she said.

‘Disconcerting … at first’

To accomplish that meant finding a project Baptist churches across the state would find interesting and challenging, and where the need is great.

WMUV found all of that on the Standing Rock reservation, a Lakota Sioux reservation the size of Connecticut that straddles North and South Dakota.

A decade ago, the union partnered with the Roanoke Valley Baptist Association in Virginia, which has a long-standing mission project to the reservation.

Today, WMUV sends about 200 volunteers from churches around the state to its Standing Rock project each summer. An additional 300 go from Virginia either through the Roanoke association or individual groups.

The work they do includes both the “give a fish” and “teach to fish” varieties, Lynn said.

There are construction teams, Vacation Bible School teams, feeding and clothing teams and a traveling fair team that sets up bounce houses. All rove between the reservation’s 10 communities.

But going back each year revealed underlying community problems to the visitors, such as teen suicide. So an equestrian ministry was established to work with troubled youth, Lynn said.

It was also learned through experience that sharing the gospel to Native Americans requires them getting to know and trust you, she said.

“This was disconcerting for our volunteers at first,” she said, adding that some chose not to return.

‘They come home ... with fresh eyes’

“The culture there requires that you build relationships first before they are receptive to hearing anything you have to say,” Lynn said.

Building those relationships, she added, of course requires time that has also changed the mission culture of many of the participating Baptist churches.

Many have developed friendships with reservation residents that are nurtured outside the confines of the mission trips. Lynn said Facebook groups have been created where the Native Americans and their visitors keep track of illnesses and deaths.

Some churches report a renewed enthusiasm in local ministries, she added.

“They come home and see their communities with fresh eyes, as well.”

In Tennessee, Prince said he’s also seen the world with fresh eyes since participating in his first encounter with the Sioux six years ago.

One way that’s happened is through their spirituality. The Sioux all believe in a great creator who unites them and inspires a culture that puts others first.

“We really don’t have that off the reservation,” Prince said. “Our culture is such a me-first culture, and when you go on the reservation, you don’t experience that.”

]]>

Returning over many years to the same mission destination reaps huge benefits for those going and those welcoming, say Baptist groups in Virginia and Tennessee.

By Jeff Brumley

Even the Oglala Lakota Sioux who haven’t embraced Christianity live out gospel values such as family, charity and self-sacrifice, Tennessean Sean Prince says.

Prince is the organizer of an annual mission trip to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota for his congregation, First Baptist Church of Murfreesboro, Tenn. They’ve visited the same reservation, and the same communities within it, for six summers.

Going back repeatedly, Prince said, has enabled him and others to see first-hand how Native American culture is built on helping and trusting others regardless of personal circumstances.

“And that resonates with me,” Prince said.

It’s taken multiple trips to the same site to fully appreciate the qualities of Native American culture, he added.

“Each year we are touched in ways that are fully unexpected,” he said. “We fully acknowledge that we are more so the beneficiaries of the trip than they are.”

‘Beyond charitable response’

Prince’s observation reflects a trend sweeping American churches, Baptist and otherwise, away from the one-time-visit mission trips to the keep-coming-back variety.

Ministry leaders in locations receiving the visits, as well as those traveling say it’s a better use of money, sweat and love to focus on one project and place over many years.

And the idea has a firm footing already among major Christian organizations as well as individual churches.

“One of the things WMU wanted to do was move beyond the charitable response — the giving of a fish,” said Maria Lynn, adult missions coordinator for Woman’s Missionary Union of Virginia, based in Richmond.

The previous model accomplished a lot of good through efforts such as clothing and feeding programs, Lynn said.

“But we were praying how we could do more empowering kinds of ministries — teaching them to fish,” she said.

‘Disconcerting … at first’

To accomplish that meant finding a project Baptist churches across the state would find interesting and challenging, and where the need is great.

WMUV found all of that on the Standing Rock reservation, a Lakota Sioux reservation the size of Connecticut that straddles North and South Dakota.

A decade ago, the union partnered with the Roanoke Valley Baptist Association in Virginia, which has a long-standing mission project to the reservation.

Today, WMUV sends about 200 volunteers from churches around the state to its Standing Rock project each summer. An additional 300 go from Virginia either through the Roanoke association or individual groups.

The work they do includes both the “give a fish” and “teach to fish” varieties, Lynn said.

There are construction teams, Vacation Bible School teams, feeding and clothing teams and a traveling fair team that sets up bounce houses. All rove between the reservation’s 10 communities.

But going back each year revealed underlying community problems to the visitors, such as teen suicide. So an equestrian ministry was established to work with troubled youth, Lynn said.

It was also learned through experience that sharing the gospel to Native Americans requires them getting to know and trust you, she said.

“This was disconcerting for our volunteers at first,” she said, adding that some chose not to return.

‘They come home ... with fresh eyes’

“The culture there requires that you build relationships first before they are receptive to hearing anything you have to say,” Lynn said.

Building those relationships, she added, of course requires time that has also changed the mission culture of many of the participating Baptist churches.

Many have developed friendships with reservation residents that are nurtured outside the confines of the mission trips. Lynn said Facebook groups have been created where the Native Americans and their visitors keep track of illnesses and deaths.

Some churches report a renewed enthusiasm in local ministries, she added.

“They come home and see their communities with fresh eyes, as well.”

In Tennessee, Prince said he’s also seen the world with fresh eyes since participating in his first encounter with the Sioux six years ago.

One way that’s happened is through their spirituality. The Sioux all believe in a great creator who unites them and inspires a culture that puts others first.

“We really don’t have that off the reservation,” Prince said. “Our culture is such a me-first culture, and when you go on the reservation, you don’t experience that.”

Shifts in how that generation chooses to volunteer is impacting church ministries.

By Vicki Brown

Many churches rely on retirees as volunteers to keep some programs and activities vital and growing. Some congregations turn to mature adults for the basics — answering phones, stuffing envelopes and other office or maintenance duties — to help hold down administrative costs.

But as the Baby Boomer generation retires, church leaders who hope to continue to tap into retiree time and resources may need to rethink the ministries they ask mature adults to take on.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2013 “Volunteering in the U.S.” report indicates volunteerism among 45- to 64-year-olds declined in the previous two years. What forces may be driving that trend, and what can congregations do to attract volunteers?

The generation preceding the Boomers — the Builders — tended to commit to an organization or group, such as church or a civic club, noted Amy Hanson, an expert on aging and Boomers.

“Boomers and subsequent generations tend to want to volunteer for a certain project or a cause that is near and dear to their heart,” noted Hanson, author of Baby Boomers and Beyond: Tapping the Ministry Talents and Passions of Adults Over 50.

Many Boomers move away from volunteering once their children leave home or as a result of downsizing their lifestyle, said Frank Fain, director of educational services for the Baptist Home in Missouri. Some give up volunteering for school events and church functions geared for children and youth because they gave their time when their own children participated in those activities.

Some give up volunteering so that they have time to travel or pursue other interests they did not have time to do before, Fain added.

Financial need also drives availability, he said. Some mature adults who lost their jobs in the market downturn in 2008 were unemployed for a year or longer. Those who volunteered during that time returned to the workforce once they found positions. Many now work two jobs, just to achieve the same income of their former employment, Fain said.

Much of the volunteer work Boomers do is not counted in most surveys. Family caregiving is a notable category, and the hours spent caring for parents and children aren’t “registered” volunteer hours.

Church leaders sometimes do not recognize all the work volunteers do. “In our own congregational settings, involvement in ‘everyday’ ministries ... [such as] Sunday school, deacons [and] children’s ministry often gets overlooked,” noted Dennis Myers, a gerontology expert for the Baylor University School of Social Work.

He believes church members already committed to volunteering for long-time congregational programs, such as Bible study, will remain with them. However, churches might lose some volunteer hours to other activities.

“I do see some loss in ministries that depend on the discretionary time of retirees — extended mission involvements and ‘beyond-the-walls’ ministries in the community,” Myers said.

The key to enticing Baby Boomers to volunteer is to tap into their passions, Hanson and Myers agreed. And congregations must recognize and respect that Boomers prefer short-term commitments, rather than signing up for a multi-year stint.

“While the Builder generation was willing to sign on and teach the Sunday school class for 20 years, the Boomers want to know that they can be gone to see their grandkids play soccer or take a spontaneous trip with their spouse,” Hanson pointed out.

Focus on “small bites” and “passion” is Myers’ advice. “Linking the volunteer experience to a sense of call and a powerful opportunity to give back and do the things they always wanted to do but did not for a lot of reasons is compelling,” he explained.

“Boomers have an entrepreneurial spirit and an attitude that they can change the world,” Hanson added.

She calls on congregations to think beyond stapling papers and answering phones to unleashing the generation to lead ministries that use their skills and meet community needs. “This is a group that can make a significant difference for Christ, and we need to empower them to do it,” Hanson said.

Senior adult ministry? Not so much

Churches looking to the Boomer generation to bolster or revitalize senior adult ministry may be disappointed, Fain explained. While most congregations think Boomers will move right into the ministry, they likely will not, because they view it as something for their parents and grandparents.

Boomers do not want a connection to anything labeled “senior,” these experts agreed. “Volunteer recruitment in this cohort needs to be highly individualized, clearly focused and absent any link with ‘senior adult’ ministry,” Myers explained.

Just as volunteerism needs to be focused, so does giving. Myers sees Baby Boomers as “basically generous,” but appeals to the generation’s need to strike the same chords — passion and specific projects or social concerns.

Boomers — just like all believers — must be reminded of the biblical mandate to give, Hanson noted.

“Giving is a discipleship issue. It’s about continuing to grow as a follower of Christ,” she said.

“Our world sends the message that you should work hard and build up a nest egg in order to retire and enjoy life, but the Bible has a counter-culture message.”

Church leaders need to remember not all Boomers are relatively affluent and able to give, Myers pointed out.

“Boomers are also in poverty and struggle to meet basic needs on a day-to-day basis,” he said.

Others suffer health issues, and many struggle with early dementia, he added.

Congregations also must be aware that not all Boomers are believers, he noted. Meeting social needs with them may open opportunities to minister to them.

Shifts in how that generation chooses to volunteer is impacting church ministries.

By Vicki Brown

Many churches rely on retirees as volunteers to keep some programs and activities vital and growing. Some congregations turn to mature adults for the basics — answering phones, stuffing envelopes and other office or maintenance duties — to help hold down administrative costs.

But as the Baby Boomer generation retires, church leaders who hope to continue to tap into retiree time and resources may need to rethink the ministries they ask mature adults to take on.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2013 “Volunteering in the U.S.” report indicates volunteerism among 45- to 64-year-olds declined in the previous two years. What forces may be driving that trend, and what can congregations do to attract volunteers?

The generation preceding the Boomers — the Builders — tended to commit to an organization or group, such as church or a civic club, noted Amy Hanson, an expert on aging and Boomers.

“Boomers and subsequent generations tend to want to volunteer for a certain project or a cause that is near and dear to their heart,” noted Hanson, author of Baby Boomers and Beyond: Tapping the Ministry Talents and Passions of Adults Over 50.

Many Boomers move away from volunteering once their children leave home or as a result of downsizing their lifestyle, said Frank Fain, director of educational services for the Baptist Home in Missouri. Some give up volunteering for school events and church functions geared for children and youth because they gave their time when their own children participated in those activities.

Some give up volunteering so that they have time to travel or pursue other interests they did not have time to do before, Fain added.

Financial need also drives availability, he said. Some mature adults who lost their jobs in the market downturn in 2008 were unemployed for a year or longer. Those who volunteered during that time returned to the workforce once they found positions. Many now work two jobs, just to achieve the same income of their former employment, Fain said.

Much of the volunteer work Boomers do is not counted in most surveys. Family caregiving is a notable category, and the hours spent caring for parents and children aren’t “registered” volunteer hours.

Church leaders sometimes do not recognize all the work volunteers do. “In our own congregational settings, involvement in ‘everyday’ ministries ... [such as] Sunday school, deacons [and] children’s ministry often gets overlooked,” noted Dennis Myers, a gerontology expert for the Baylor University School of Social Work.

He believes church members already committed to volunteering for long-time congregational programs, such as Bible study, will remain with them. However, churches might lose some volunteer hours to other activities.

“I do see some loss in ministries that depend on the discretionary time of retirees — extended mission involvements and ‘beyond-the-walls’ ministries in the community,” Myers said.

The key to enticing Baby Boomers to volunteer is to tap into their passions, Hanson and Myers agreed. And congregations must recognize and respect that Boomers prefer short-term commitments, rather than signing up for a multi-year stint.

“While the Builder generation was willing to sign on and teach the Sunday school class for 20 years, the Boomers want to know that they can be gone to see their grandkids play soccer or take a spontaneous trip with their spouse,” Hanson pointed out.

Focus on “small bites” and “passion” is Myers’ advice. “Linking the volunteer experience to a sense of call and a powerful opportunity to give back and do the things they always wanted to do but did not for a lot of reasons is compelling,” he explained.

“Boomers have an entrepreneurial spirit and an attitude that they can change the world,” Hanson added.

She calls on congregations to think beyond stapling papers and answering phones to unleashing the generation to lead ministries that use their skills and meet community needs. “This is a group that can make a significant difference for Christ, and we need to empower them to do it,” Hanson said.

Senior adult ministry? Not so much

Churches looking to the Boomer generation to bolster or revitalize senior adult ministry may be disappointed, Fain explained. While most congregations think Boomers will move right into the ministry, they likely will not, because they view it as something for their parents and grandparents.

Boomers do not want a connection to anything labeled “senior,” these experts agreed. “Volunteer recruitment in this cohort needs to be highly individualized, clearly focused and absent any link with ‘senior adult’ ministry,” Myers explained.

Just as volunteerism needs to be focused, so does giving. Myers sees Baby Boomers as “basically generous,” but appeals to the generation’s need to strike the same chords — passion and specific projects or social concerns.

Boomers — just like all believers — must be reminded of the biblical mandate to give, Hanson noted.

“Giving is a discipleship issue. It’s about continuing to grow as a follower of Christ,” she said.

“Our world sends the message that you should work hard and build up a nest egg in order to retire and enjoy life, but the Bible has a counter-culture message.”

Church leaders need to remember not all Boomers are relatively affluent and able to give, Myers pointed out.

“Boomers are also in poverty and struggle to meet basic needs on a day-to-day basis,” he said.

Others suffer health issues, and many struggle with early dementia, he added.

Congregations also must be aware that not all Boomers are believers, he noted. Meeting social needs with them may open opportunities to minister to them.

Serving war-ravaged refugees, including indigenous Christian groups, in the Middle East requires extra cultural and religious sensitivity among missionaries living in cultures that do not value religious freedom, experts say.

By Jeff Brumley

As complicated and sensitive as the situation in the Middle East is for Western governments, it is just as tricky for Christian organizations with missionaries in the region.

The region historically hostile to evangelism and ministry has become increasingly perilous for Baptist and other Christians as civil wars and terrorist groups like ISIS have driven terrified civilians from Iraq and Syria.

And because thousands of Orthodox and other eastern Christians are among the thousands of terrified refugees fleeing into neighboring nations, missionaries must be sensitive and careful about how they minister to those groups.

“There’s so much we have to be in touch with in the region when we think about ministry to and among either Christians or Muslims in that context,” said Rob Nash, a dean and professor of missions and world religions at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology.

Missionaries working in the Middle East and northern Africa have always faced government restrictions on their activities, including bans from proselytizing. Socially the practice is also taboo in those cultures.

“You always live with that challenge,” Nash said.

But those prohibitions against seeking to convert Muslims also apply in some areas against seeking to convert Arab Christians to Protestant traditions, Nash said.

Even when that’s not the case, Protestant Christian missionaries must set aside beliefs about the inadequacy of ancient, indigenous Christians when ministering to them as refugees, he said.

And that can be especially hard for evangelicals, added Nash, a former global missions coordinator for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

“Evangelicals have to guard against the tendency of wanting to proselytize Christians,” he said. “That’s one of their biggest challenges.”

It’s a challenge some organizations and their partners and missionaries in the region are trying to embrace.

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has been working through existing ministries and its own field personnel to minister to refugees fleeing Middle Eastern civil wars and other conflicts.

According to an internal global missions document provided by the CBF, that effort includes increasing funding to regional ministries and missionaries who “avoid cookie-cutter approaches and Western bias” in their work.

“They can also explore opportunities to leverage resources brought in by other agencies and groups to increase the impact in their chosen ministry locations,” according to the February 2014 document.

Among those locations are a pre-existing ministry in Lebanon, for which $25,000 was being sought, and $10,000 to expand the efforts of a couple working with refugees who have fled to Turkey.

ABPnews/Herald, which is not identifying those missionaries to avoid jeopardizing their safety, was told by the couple in Turkey that they are seeing increasing numbers of the Yazidis religious minority fleeing ISIS in Syria.

A group of churches in Turkey is supplying refugee camps and “we are assisting this effort with donations of … money, clothing, and other items,” one of the missionaries in Turkey said via email.

In Lebanon, the CBF-supported missionaries are supporting a women’s group that includes Bible study and food donations, a school for refugee children and a food project.

“The prayerful lives of field personnel and partners in direct contact with Syrians and their needs will shape the direction of the response,” the CBF missions document says about the ministries in Lebanon.

But wherever they are in the Middle East, field personnel constantly struggle with cultures where religious freedom is not a shared value, said Nell Green, a CBF missionary who has worked in a number of Muslim nations.

“It’s hard to explain to someone in a free, Western culture where you can just say whatever you want, wherever you want, whenever you want,” Green said.

It requires an awareness of an extreme antipathy to any outward signs and symbols of non-Muslim faiths. Missionaries must also be careful how they speak, Green said.

Working in those environments also requires an extreme sensitivity and openness to the Holy Spirit, Green said, to be prepared for those subtle opportunities to share the faith.

Green said Americans and others often become angry at such limitations. But she reminds them it’s simply the same insensitivity that drives opposition to Muslims in the U.S.

And the Western value of religious freedom is easily overcome by missionaries who see the great human needs in the countries where they are serving, Green said.

But the price they pay is real, she added.

“You do have to be careful and there are people watching you.”

]]>

Serving war-ravaged refugees, including indigenous Christian groups, in the Middle East requires extra cultural and religious sensitivity among missionaries living in cultures that do not value religious freedom, experts say.

By Jeff Brumley

As complicated and sensitive as the situation in the Middle East is for Western governments, it is just as tricky for Christian organizations with missionaries in the region.

The region historically hostile to evangelism and ministry has become increasingly perilous for Baptist and other Christians as civil wars and terrorist groups like ISIS have driven terrified civilians from Iraq and Syria.

And because thousands of Orthodox and other eastern Christians are among the thousands of terrified refugees fleeing into neighboring nations, missionaries must be sensitive and careful about how they minister to those groups.

“There’s so much we have to be in touch with in the region when we think about ministry to and among either Christians or Muslims in that context,” said Rob Nash, a dean and professor of missions and world religions at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology.

Missionaries working in the Middle East and northern Africa have always faced government restrictions on their activities, including bans from proselytizing. Socially the practice is also taboo in those cultures.

“You always live with that challenge,” Nash said.

But those prohibitions against seeking to convert Muslims also apply in some areas against seeking to convert Arab Christians to Protestant traditions, Nash said.

Even when that’s not the case, Protestant Christian missionaries must set aside beliefs about the inadequacy of ancient, indigenous Christians when ministering to them as refugees, he said.

And that can be especially hard for evangelicals, added Nash, a former global missions coordinator for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

“Evangelicals have to guard against the tendency of wanting to proselytize Christians,” he said. “That’s one of their biggest challenges.”

It’s a challenge some organizations and their partners and missionaries in the region are trying to embrace.

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has been working through existing ministries and its own field personnel to minister to refugees fleeing Middle Eastern civil wars and other conflicts.

According to an internal global missions document provided by the CBF, that effort includes increasing funding to regional ministries and missionaries who “avoid cookie-cutter approaches and Western bias” in their work.

“They can also explore opportunities to leverage resources brought in by other agencies and groups to increase the impact in their chosen ministry locations,” according to the February 2014 document.

Among those locations are a pre-existing ministry in Lebanon, for which $25,000 was being sought, and $10,000 to expand the efforts of a couple working with refugees who have fled to Turkey.

ABPnews/Herald, which is not identifying those missionaries to avoid jeopardizing their safety, was told by the couple in Turkey that they are seeing increasing numbers of the Yazidis religious minority fleeing ISIS in Syria.

A group of churches in Turkey is supplying refugee camps and “we are assisting this effort with donations of … money, clothing, and other items,” one of the missionaries in Turkey said via email.

In Lebanon, the CBF-supported missionaries are supporting a women’s group that includes Bible study and food donations, a school for refugee children and a food project.

“The prayerful lives of field personnel and partners in direct contact with Syrians and their needs will shape the direction of the response,” the CBF missions document says about the ministries in Lebanon.

But wherever they are in the Middle East, field personnel constantly struggle with cultures where religious freedom is not a shared value, said Nell Green, a CBF missionary who has worked in a number of Muslim nations.

“It’s hard to explain to someone in a free, Western culture where you can just say whatever you want, wherever you want, whenever you want,” Green said.

It requires an awareness of an extreme antipathy to any outward signs and symbols of non-Muslim faiths. Missionaries must also be careful how they speak, Green said.

Working in those environments also requires an extreme sensitivity and openness to the Holy Spirit, Green said, to be prepared for those subtle opportunities to share the faith.

Green said Americans and others often become angry at such limitations. But she reminds them it’s simply the same insensitivity that drives opposition to Muslims in the U.S.

And the Western value of religious freedom is easily overcome by missionaries who see the great human needs in the countries where they are serving, Green said.

Churches, ministers and educators say one of the best ways to serve communities is by helping local schools.

By Jeff Brumley and Eric Eckert

Churches eager to engage the communities around them would be challenged to find a better place to start than local public schools.

Think about it, says Carrie Dean, co-pastor of Edgewood Church in Atlanta: schools, and especially teachers, are the first to know about families in crisis and the other needs of children, siblings and parents.

“In addition, schools are places that are already working to engage the busy families in your community,” said Dean, whose Cooperative Baptist missional church plant runs a school supply store and provides tutoring and other services for a nearby elementary school.

“Churches that are interested in understanding and reaching their communities would be hard-pressed to find a better place to love, serve — be good news in their community,” she said in an email to ABPnews/Herald.

It’s a subject on ministers’ minds across the country as the nation’s children return to school from summer break.

And educators like Diana Garland, dean of Baylor University’s School of Social Work are urging churches to consider how they can best serve those children and their families.

Garland said it comes down to the fact that the quality of relationships between churches and schools is not only about the quantity of money donated to schools. Churches need to consider carefully their approach to school ministries, she says.

• Consider service rather than simply sending money.

“It’s easy to write a check,” Garland said. “It’s a lot harder to spend an hour a week to help a kid learn to read. Both are important, but the latter is often more meaningful.”

Churches can collaborate with school officials to do a number of things — from upgrading facilities and organizing events to staffing mentoring programs and praying with teachers.

The impact of this type of service is twofold, she said. The people on the receiving end can benefit, and those who serve can grow in their faith.

“Our research shows that the most effective way to grow the faith life of Christians is to engage them in meaningful service to others,” Garland said.

“We were surprised to find that service is more effective than any other single approach to faith development — including attending worship study groups and Bible study groups. Of course, that doesn’t mean that worship and Bible study are unimportant. They are. But without service, they are insufficient in growing a lasting faith.”

• Don’t assume you know the needs of the school.

“We bring our sense of calling, but then it’s time for our church to sit down and say, ‘We want to help, but we don’t know how.’ We need to be respectful and understand that we don’t have the answers and that we need to collaborate,” Garland said.

For example, churches that collect school supplies for classrooms might incorrectly assume felt-tip markers would be helpful, but a conversation with teachers and administrators could reveal the school doesn’t permit students to use felt-tip markers. Instead, the school might need its cafeteria painted or assistance in providing uniforms, she said.

• Think relationally.

“Relationships are the most important and profound gift we can give,” Garland said. “As important as school supplies are, they are even more effective when they come from people who know the people, know the children.”

“There is nothing more powerful than service that builds an ongoing relationship between two people, which is why tutoring and mentoring and befriending are so valuable.”

In Atlanta, Dean said churches benefit spiritually from the service rendered to local schools.

“Anytime you commit to humbly love and serve another group of people for the long haul, you grow,” she said. “You grow in your capacity to love the people around you, to walk humbly … and you find joy in unexpected places as you develop a history with people who were once strangers.”

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Churches, ministers and educators say one of the best ways to serve communities is by helping local schools.

By Jeff Brumley and Eric Eckert

Churches eager to engage the communities around them would be challenged to find a better place to start than local public schools.

Think about it, says Carrie Dean, co-pastor of Edgewood Church in Atlanta: schools, and especially teachers, are the first to know about families in crisis and the other needs of children, siblings and parents.

“In addition, schools are places that are already working to engage the busy families in your community,” said Dean, whose Cooperative Baptist missional church plant runs a school supply store and provides tutoring and other services for a nearby elementary school.

“Churches that are interested in understanding and reaching their communities would be hard-pressed to find a better place to love, serve — be good news in their community,” she said in an email to ABPnews/Herald.

It’s a subject on ministers’ minds across the country as the nation’s children return to school from summer break.

And educators like Diana Garland, dean of Baylor University’s School of Social Work are urging churches to consider how they can best serve those children and their families.

Garland said it comes down to the fact that the quality of relationships between churches and schools is not only about the quantity of money donated to schools. Churches need to consider carefully their approach to school ministries, she says.

• Consider service rather than simply sending money.

“It’s easy to write a check,” Garland said. “It’s a lot harder to spend an hour a week to help a kid learn to read. Both are important, but the latter is often more meaningful.”

Churches can collaborate with school officials to do a number of things — from upgrading facilities and organizing events to staffing mentoring programs and praying with teachers.

The impact of this type of service is twofold, she said. The people on the receiving end can benefit, and those who serve can grow in their faith.

“Our research shows that the most effective way to grow the faith life of Christians is to engage them in meaningful service to others,” Garland said.

“We were surprised to find that service is more effective than any other single approach to faith development — including attending worship study groups and Bible study groups. Of course, that doesn’t mean that worship and Bible study are unimportant. They are. But without service, they are insufficient in growing a lasting faith.”

• Don’t assume you know the needs of the school.

“We bring our sense of calling, but then it’s time for our church to sit down and say, ‘We want to help, but we don’t know how.’ We need to be respectful and understand that we don’t have the answers and that we need to collaborate,” Garland said.

For example, churches that collect school supplies for classrooms might incorrectly assume felt-tip markers would be helpful, but a conversation with teachers and administrators could reveal the school doesn’t permit students to use felt-tip markers. Instead, the school might need its cafeteria painted or assistance in providing uniforms, she said.

• Think relationally.

“Relationships are the most important and profound gift we can give,” Garland said. “As important as school supplies are, they are even more effective when they come from people who know the people, know the children.”

“There is nothing more powerful than service that builds an ongoing relationship between two people, which is why tutoring and mentoring and befriending are so valuable.”

In Atlanta, Dean said churches benefit spiritually from the service rendered to local schools.

“Anytime you commit to humbly love and serve another group of people for the long haul, you grow,” she said. “You grow in your capacity to love the people around you, to walk humbly … and you find joy in unexpected places as you develop a history with people who were once strangers.”

Partnering with existing ministries and community groups is helping churches fulfill their missions in their local communities.

By Jeff Brumley

Flanked by two of her three young children, Virginian Brenda Espinet broke into tears Saturday morning before about 35 Floridians, giving thanks for their generosity and admitting a little embarrassment at needing their financial and other assistance.

“I’m usually the one doing the helping,” she told the audience gathered for a building dedication at United Community Outreach Ministry, or UCOM, a faith-based nonprofit that provides food, monetary help, Meals on Wheels, summer lunches, tutoring and other services to some of the most economically distressed neighborhoods in Jacksonville, Fla.

After moving to Florida last fall, Espinet, her husband and three childen — ages 11, 5 and 3 — found it harder to get on their feet than planned and needed money and food donations to get by until food stamps and wages started coming in. The family of five lived in a one-room motel for months before finding an apartment.

“We never had to ask for help like this,” Espinet said, adding that she plans to volunteer for UCOM as a way of giving back what was so freely given to her.

Her attitude of grateful action, pastors and other experts say, is one that is also helping keep many churches alive and healthy in an era of congregational and religious decline.

Connecting with and helping existing nonprofits and other local ministries can multiply a church’s influence in its community, said Kyle Reese, pastor of Hendricks Avenue Baptist Church, one of UCOM’s major supporters.

The church is one of several Jacksonville congregations that donate money and provide volunteers to help with the organization’s food bank and other programs. Reese said that makes more sense than HAB trying to become a food distribution center.

It doesn’t mean not taking on some missions directly. The church serves as a furniture distribution center for families leaving Jacksonville’s main homeless shelter, the Sulzbacher Center. The project has turned HAB’s gym into a furniture warehouse.

“It’s like a big, big garage sale,” he said.

But there are other endeavors others already do — and do better than HAB probably would. UCOM is one of them, he said.

They “magnify our impact in the city,” Reese said during Saturday’s event celebrating the restoration of UCOM’s small headquarters building. “We can do more together than apart.”

Campers with the Birmingham, Ala.-based mission camp program descended on the UCOM’s headquarters in July to repaint the historic church building and construct vegetable beds to grow food for clients.

Shapard said the visiting Passport youth, and their project planners in Alabama, “raved about” the UCOM project in Jacksonville. Helping outside organizations not only boosts churches, but state-level organizations like CBF Florida, as well.

“It’s our job to be a resource to our partners and to connect them with projects and resources like this,” Shapard said.

Such help is, of course, vital to the organizations being helped by HAB and Florida CBF.

“Without our church partners, we wouldn’t be able to operate,” said Heather Mauney, UCOM’s executive director.

Nearly 100 percent of its funding comes from churches, the rest from individuals, Mauney said. As much as 85 percent of the food in its pantry also comes from congregations, she said.

She said UCOM was founded on a model that relies on outside help for its operations.

“The idea is that people can make more of an impact in a community by working together,” Mauney said. “If HAB and other churches used those resources to do their own food pantry, the funds wouldn’t go as far, they wouldn’t be able to buy as much or serve as many as they do working with UCOM.”

‘Think service’

That approach to ministry isn’t anything new — but it is one increasingly recognized as a key to the future survival of churches and ministries in an increasingly post-Christian, post-church culture, church planters say.

It’s the model that’s benefited the hospitality ministry of Grace and Main in Danville, Va. The house-based, inner-city ministry provides some housing for addicts and the homeless and advocates for their rights in housing and other issues. Meanwhile, it depends on financial, food and other support from tradition churches in the city.

At The Well at Springfield in Jacksonville, Fla., Rogers encourages congregational involvement in neighborhood preservation, animal rescue and a range of other educational and civic initiatives in the urban core neighborhood where they worship.

That approach to ministry helps a church become a part of the everyday life of the community in which it’s located, said Travis Collins, director of mission advancement for the U.S. operations of Fresh Expressions, an international effort to help churches navigate a rapidly changing postmodern culture.

It helps congregations meet the people and learn what the challenges are in their communities, Collins said.

“When thinking through the strategy of beginning a new church, think service, not a service,” Collins said. That means putting worship attraction and attendance behind being of use to surrounding neighborhoods.

If there are just five founding members, they should join a local service group, even secular ones, if it can tie them into the community, Collins said.

And don’t go in with answers and solutions, Collins added. Instead, volunteers should ask where they can be of most help and then throw themselves into that work.

‘What it means to be Baptist’

That’s been the way HAB and other Jacksonville churches have helped at UCOM, Mauney said, and with tangible benefits to the city’s struggling residents.

In July, HAB volunteers and those from other churches delivered 1,300 Meals on Wheels to the elderly. Nearly 9,000 have been delivered this year.

More than 1,300 received food from the pantry in July, including 820 meals for the summer lunch program for youth, Mauney said.

That kind of impact, Reese said, enables HAB to be the hands and feet of Christ in Jacksonville.

“It helps us live out what it means to be Baptists every day,” he said.

]]>

Partnering with existing ministries and community groups is helping churches fulfill their missions in their local communities.

By Jeff Brumley

Flanked by two of her three young children, Virginian Brenda Espinet broke into tears Saturday morning before about 35 Floridians, giving thanks for their generosity and admitting a little embarrassment at needing their financial and other assistance.

“I’m usually the one doing the helping,” she told the audience gathered for a building dedication at United Community Outreach Ministry, or UCOM, a faith-based nonprofit that provides food, monetary help, Meals on Wheels, summer lunches, tutoring and other services to some of the most economically distressed neighborhoods in Jacksonville, Fla.

After moving to Florida last fall, Espinet, her husband and three childen — ages 11, 5 and 3 — found it harder to get on their feet than planned and needed money and food donations to get by until food stamps and wages started coming in. The family of five lived in a one-room motel for months before finding an apartment.

“We never had to ask for help like this,” Espinet said, adding that she plans to volunteer for UCOM as a way of giving back what was so freely given to her.

Her attitude of grateful action, pastors and other experts say, is one that is also helping keep many churches alive and healthy in an era of congregational and religious decline.

Connecting with and helping existing nonprofits and other local ministries can multiply a church’s influence in its community, said Kyle Reese, pastor of Hendricks Avenue Baptist Church, one of UCOM’s major supporters.

The church is one of several Jacksonville congregations that donate money and provide volunteers to help with the organization’s food bank and other programs. Reese said that makes more sense than HAB trying to become a food distribution center.

It doesn’t mean not taking on some missions directly. The church serves as a furniture distribution center for families leaving Jacksonville’s main homeless shelter, the Sulzbacher Center. The project has turned HAB’s gym into a furniture warehouse.

“It’s like a big, big garage sale,” he said.

But there are other endeavors others already do — and do better than HAB probably would. UCOM is one of them, he said.

They “magnify our impact in the city,” Reese said during Saturday’s event celebrating the restoration of UCOM’s small headquarters building. “We can do more together than apart.”

Campers with the Birmingham, Ala.-based mission camp program descended on the UCOM’s headquarters in July to repaint the historic church building and construct vegetable beds to grow food for clients.

Shapard said the visiting Passport youth, and their project planners in Alabama, “raved about” the UCOM project in Jacksonville. Helping outside organizations not only boosts churches, but state-level organizations like CBF Florida, as well.

“It’s our job to be a resource to our partners and to connect them with projects and resources like this,” Shapard said.

Such help is, of course, vital to the organizations being helped by HAB and Florida CBF.

“Without our church partners, we wouldn’t be able to operate,” said Heather Mauney, UCOM’s executive director.

Nearly 100 percent of its funding comes from churches, the rest from individuals, Mauney said. As much as 85 percent of the food in its pantry also comes from congregations, she said.

She said UCOM was founded on a model that relies on outside help for its operations.

“The idea is that people can make more of an impact in a community by working together,” Mauney said. “If HAB and other churches used those resources to do their own food pantry, the funds wouldn’t go as far, they wouldn’t be able to buy as much or serve as many as they do working with UCOM.”

‘Think service’

That approach to ministry isn’t anything new — but it is one increasingly recognized as a key to the future survival of churches and ministries in an increasingly post-Christian, post-church culture, church planters say.

It’s the model that’s benefited the hospitality ministry of Grace and Main in Danville, Va. The house-based, inner-city ministry provides some housing for addicts and the homeless and advocates for their rights in housing and other issues. Meanwhile, it depends on financial, food and other support from tradition churches in the city.

At The Well at Springfield in Jacksonville, Fla., Rogers encourages congregational involvement in neighborhood preservation, animal rescue and a range of other educational and civic initiatives in the urban core neighborhood where they worship.

That approach to ministry helps a church become a part of the everyday life of the community in which it’s located, said Travis Collins, director of mission advancement for the U.S. operations of Fresh Expressions, an international effort to help churches navigate a rapidly changing postmodern culture.

It helps congregations meet the people and learn what the challenges are in their communities, Collins said.

“When thinking through the strategy of beginning a new church, think service, not a service,” Collins said. That means putting worship attraction and attendance behind being of use to surrounding neighborhoods.

If there are just five founding members, they should join a local service group, even secular ones, if it can tie them into the community, Collins said.

And don’t go in with answers and solutions, Collins added. Instead, volunteers should ask where they can be of most help and then throw themselves into that work.

‘What it means to be Baptist’

That’s been the way HAB and other Jacksonville churches have helped at UCOM, Mauney said, and with tangible benefits to the city’s struggling residents.

In July, HAB volunteers and those from other churches delivered 1,300 Meals on Wheels to the elderly. Nearly 9,000 have been delivered this year.

More than 1,300 received food from the pantry in July, including 820 meals for the summer lunch program for youth, Mauney said.

That kind of impact, Reese said, enables HAB to be the hands and feet of Christ in Jacksonville.

“It helps us live out what it means to be Baptists every day,” he said.

Over a two decades Passport Inc. has become a leadership incubator, nurturing a new kind of Baptist minister. That’s no surprise to the organization’s founders.

By Greg Warner

Over the last two decades, a quiet shift has taken place in how and where Baptist young people hear the call of God and receive training for Christian ministry.

One of those in the vanguard of this movement is Passport Inc., the small, multidenominational ministry based in Birmingham, Ala., that’s been conducting youth camps, educational programs and missions projects since 1993, while informally helping nurture a new generation — and perhaps a new kind — of Baptist minister.

One unintentional byproduct of Passport’s two-decade journey conducting Christian summer camps is an army of 600 former camp staffers — many of whom became creative, energetic men and women now serving in church leadership positions.

It’s an impressive list — almost 100 men and women who have worked in Passport camps are now in church ministry positions in progressive Baptist life, while others are scattered among various denominations, parachurch organizations and Christian ministries.

Even more serve in a variety of vocations unrelated to Christian ministry, but they carry the same conviction that the “call to ministry” is for all Christians, whether or not they ever get a paycheck from a church.

Creating a proving ground for ministers — a venue that has become increasingly rare in the post-denominational era — was not part of the original vision for Passport. But neither is it surprising to co-founders David and Colleen Burroughs of Birmingham.

Initial modest vision

It was originally a modest vision — provide a summer camp experience to Baptist youth who didn’t fit in to the conservative-dominated Southern Baptist summer programs. Include a missions project, involve women in leadership and embrace the tough questions that roll around in teenagers’ heads.

Now, 22 summers later, the Baptist-led organization has hosted 85,000 campers from 800 congregations representing 12 denominations, including the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church USA, United Methodist Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Campers have performed 840,000 hours of mission service and donated or raised $1.8 million for global mission projects.

“We didn’t know Passport would be a 20-year story,” says David Burroughs, who, fresh out of seminary, created the first summer camp at the urging of the CBF of Florida.

This summer, Passport will conduct 33 weeks of camp in 12 locations, employing 63 summer staffers — most college and seminary students and more than half women.

“As we’ve grown, we’ve become passionate about giving the next generation of leaders a platform, not just to preach and lead [but] to learn leadership skills like administration, budget management and worship planning,” says David, 49, Passport president.

Staffers learn a lot more too, says Colleen, 48, executive vice president. “On a team of 20 [camp staffers], only one person is the preacher.”

Discernment

That varied experience, along with counseling and encouragement in a spiritually charged climate, helps those staff members discern their calling, Colleen says. It’s transformative for a staff member “to see the light come on for a teen” who’s under his or her care.

Elizabeth Mangham Lott was already headed for a ministerial career when she graduated high school in 1995 and attended Passport as a camper. “But preaching was not on my radar at that age,” she recalls.

“Colleen Burroughs was camp pastor that summer and she was the first woman I ever heard preach,” says Lott, senior pastor at St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans. “She opened up a space in my imagination to consider my voice and my story in that capacity.”

Stephanie Vance says working at Passport camps exposed her to “places of poverty and decay — forgotten places,” and eventually led to her current job as national manager for Together for Hope, the CBF’s rural poverty initiative.

“I felt called to mission work for many years but had a very narrow view of what that would mean. It seems that taking a person out of his or her comfort zone can be the jump start that God provides on the journey toward discernment of one’s calling.”

A sharp eye

By now the Burroughses have learned to spot the future Christian ministers within the summer staff. “We can predict who will end up at seminary,” Colleen says. “It’s more surprising to them than it is to us.”

About 30 to 40 percent of summer staffers go on to seminary.

“There was no way to anticipate the scope of our former staffers,” David recalls, “until we started adding up the numbers to prepare to celebrate our 20th anniversary.”

What they found was stunning. More than 600 men and women have served on Passport summer staffs in 22 years. Of those, Passport is aware of 95 who currently serve in Christian ministry — in churches, denominations and parachurch organizations, and on the mission field.

At least 14 of the 95 serve as pastors of churches related to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, and — true to one original goal — six of the pastors are female.

The diaspora of Passport alums includes every conceivable church-ministry role — associate pastor, minister of music, education or spiritual formation, youth, children or families minister, community or missions minister, church planter and on and on.

Several are campus ministers or hospital chaplains. At least two are professors at Christian colleges; another is a school teacher.

Perhaps the biggest beneficiary of Passport’s 22-year journey is the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, whose congregations send more youth groups to Passport than any other body of churches.

At least two missionaries and nearly a dozen CBF staffers, regional coordinators or associates, and members of CBF governing bodies are Passport veterans.

“We are one of the main pipelines bringing youth and young adults to awareness of CBF,” David adds. “Our campers routinely learn about the work of CBF field personnel serving all over the globe.”

David, a native of Abilene, Texas, also spearheaded creation of the CBF’s Young Leaders Network, now called Current. And Colleen recently served as national moderator for CBF.

Clear distinctive

From Passport’s inception in 1993, the prominence and affirmation of women in ministry has set it apart in the summer-camp market — with consequences both good and bad.

“We have learned that our voice, and where we have chosen to stand on the issue of women as pastors, limits our broad acceptance,” David says. “There are a large number of churches that choose not to participate with us because they don’t believe a woman should preach.”

Passport’s first customers were moderate Baptist churches and youth ministers who welcomed the mainstream theological approach that shunned coercive evangelism in favor of an intellectual integrity that is open to the questioning of youth.

The Burroughses have cultivated Passport’s unique “voice” over the years, which now permeates all its products and events. “

That voice is a thoughtful theology that isn’t afraid to ask and discuss larger or more complicated issues of faith,” David explains. “Teenagers today want to know about other religions and how Christianity fits in. They hear mixed messages about the issue of same-sex marriage and want to know if their faith is accepting of their friends who have alternative lifestyles.

“Our voice reads the Bible as the story of redemption and grace, not of condemnation and legalism. Our voice is about a mission strategy that expects to meet the face of Christ in those we come to serve.”

Convinced the spiritual growth of youth is too important to be confined to summer camp, Passport started a devotional website for youth and young adults in 2001 to encourage spiritual reflection during Advent and Lent. It later expanded to daily online devotionals, called d365.org, which attracts 5,000 visitors a day and 1.8 million a year.

Parallel development

“In some ways, I think Passport has evolved as our network of churches has evolved,” David reasons. “And because we are small and nimble, we are able to alter plans to meet a need, and we are able to try things without fear.”

Creativity, flexibility and responsiveness are in the organization’s DNA, he says, and what has kept it alive. “So we try to be as responsive as we can be.”

“Just [recently], in response to the girls who were kidnapped in Nigeria, we are running a set of devotions that focus on the global need for justice for children and how we can take action on behalf of those most vulnerable among us.”

The popularity of its youth camps led to Passportkids! in 2004, using a grant from CBF global missions.

Passport’s role as a print-and-online publisher became more structured in 2011. With a $750,000 grant from the Lilly Endowment, Passport Media was started, which produces curricula for local-church use in vacation Bible schools, youth retreats and other settings.

‘The Call’

Passport has intentionally tried to reinterpret and expand how Christians view “the call” — both the call to vocational ministry and the call of Christ on every believer.

So Passport fashioned its summer-camp theme to encourage teenagers to consider ministry as a vocation. “We hoped to raise awareness that a career given to ministry is a worthwhile life focus,” David says. Another camp, co-sponsored with Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, helped those called to vocational ministry “explore what that might look like.”

But the concept of “call” is broader than that, touching every believer.

“We wanted to help youth see that their faith is a calling to minister — no matter what they chose for their life’s vocation,” David says. That led to new curricula for use in churches. “If they can practice this calling while in high school, we hope this will help them take their faith with them to the next step on their journey.”

One special weeklong summer camp, called Choices, invites teens to spend a week exploring how something they love — drama, music, art, leadership, sports, fitness or care for the environment — can interact with their faith, David says.

Passport also is committed to the idea that service and missions is part of a normative Christian experience. Almost every week of camp takes the youth out into the community on a mission project. And Passport camps go to places like Kenya and Liberia for cross-cultural discovery.

The Burroughses function as one unit in operating Passport, despite the fact their individual gifts are very different. Colleen says youth camps were David’s calling, not hers. But she followed him to seminary and later immersed herself in Passport.

“That’s what you do when you get married,” she says. “As a married couple, you don’t always follow both of your calls at the same time.”

A bigger vision

Still, like the campers, the Burroughses nurture, this daughter of missionaries listened to God to discern her own unique ministry: “I felt the urge to pursue something bigger than myself.”

It emerged suddenly in 2005, halfway around the world in central Africa, when a deadly drought threatened to kill 5 million people in Malawi, where she was raised. She knew she was supposed to help, but how?

“We just put up a website,” she recalls. Word quickly spread among the community of former Passport campers. “We just said, ‘Here’s a need. How can you help?’ And the youth figured out how to raise the money.”

“That’s exactly what Passport is about,” she says. A need arose that no one was addressing. But Passport lacked the resources. “All I had was 6,000 teenagers,” she recalls facetiously.

That informal online network of young people — predisposed toward Christian service by their Passport experience — raised $162,500 in the first year for well-drilling, pumps and irrigation projects. The Passport-affiliated nonprofit that resulted, Watering Malawi, has since raised a total of $800,000 in nine years.

“I thought Watering Malawi would be a 6-month-to-a-year relief effort,” Colleen says. “We could not have ‘watered Malawi’ without Passport. That has been the amazing, surprising thing.”

Legacy

After more than 20 years at Passport and now in their late 40s, the Burroughses are starting to look ahead to the legacy they will leave behind.

“I don’t want to take for granted that Passport will always be here,” Colleen says. “We want to make sure it’s on solid footing when we retire or go on to something else.”

Their own 15-year-old twins, Milligan and Walker, are looking forward to working in the camps one day.

“We are passionate that we want the next generation of youth to have access to a camp program like Passport and access to solid Bible studies through Passport Media,” David explains.

That has prompted the organization to launch a $1 million endowment campaign in what it hopes will secure Passport’s future. “The endowment campaign, approved by its board of directors, is Passport’s first. It’s another shift of focus for the couple that will take them out of their comfort zone. They’re confident but know the stakes are high.

Says Colleen, “If we can’t do this, we won’t last another 20 years.”

This article originally appeared in the May/June 2014 issue of Herald, our bi-monthly magazine. To find out more about the magazine, click here.

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Over a two decades Passport Inc. has become a leadership incubator, nurturing a new kind of Baptist minister. That’s no surprise to the organization’s founders.

By Greg Warner

Over the last two decades, a quiet shift has taken place in how and where Baptist young people hear the call of God and receive training for Christian ministry.

One of those in the vanguard of this movement is Passport Inc., the small, multidenominational ministry based in Birmingham, Ala., that’s been conducting youth camps, educational programs and missions projects since 1993, while informally helping nurture a new generation — and perhaps a new kind — of Baptist minister.

One unintentional byproduct of Passport’s two-decade journey conducting Christian summer camps is an army of 600 former camp staffers — many of whom became creative, energetic men and women now serving in church leadership positions.

It’s an impressive list — almost 100 men and women who have worked in Passport camps are now in church ministry positions in progressive Baptist life, while others are scattered among various denominations, parachurch organizations and Christian ministries.

Even more serve in a variety of vocations unrelated to Christian ministry, but they carry the same conviction that the “call to ministry” is for all Christians, whether or not they ever get a paycheck from a church.

Creating a proving ground for ministers — a venue that has become increasingly rare in the post-denominational era — was not part of the original vision for Passport. But neither is it surprising to co-founders David and Colleen Burroughs of Birmingham.

Initial modest vision

It was originally a modest vision — provide a summer camp experience to Baptist youth who didn’t fit in to the conservative-dominated Southern Baptist summer programs. Include a missions project, involve women in leadership and embrace the tough questions that roll around in teenagers’ heads.

Now, 22 summers later, the Baptist-led organization has hosted 85,000 campers from 800 congregations representing 12 denominations, including the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church USA, United Methodist Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Campers have performed 840,000 hours of mission service and donated or raised $1.8 million for global mission projects.

“We didn’t know Passport would be a 20-year story,” says David Burroughs, who, fresh out of seminary, created the first summer camp at the urging of the CBF of Florida.

This summer, Passport will conduct 33 weeks of camp in 12 locations, employing 63 summer staffers — most college and seminary students and more than half women.

“As we’ve grown, we’ve become passionate about giving the next generation of leaders a platform, not just to preach and lead [but] to learn leadership skills like administration, budget management and worship planning,” says David, 49, Passport president.

Staffers learn a lot more too, says Colleen, 48, executive vice president. “On a team of 20 [camp staffers], only one person is the preacher.”

Discernment

That varied experience, along with counseling and encouragement in a spiritually charged climate, helps those staff members discern their calling, Colleen says. It’s transformative for a staff member “to see the light come on for a teen” who’s under his or her care.

Elizabeth Mangham Lott was already headed for a ministerial career when she graduated high school in 1995 and attended Passport as a camper. “But preaching was not on my radar at that age,” she recalls.

“Colleen Burroughs was camp pastor that summer and she was the first woman I ever heard preach,” says Lott, senior pastor at St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans. “She opened up a space in my imagination to consider my voice and my story in that capacity.”

Stephanie Vance says working at Passport camps exposed her to “places of poverty and decay — forgotten places,” and eventually led to her current job as national manager for Together for Hope, the CBF’s rural poverty initiative.

“I felt called to mission work for many years but had a very narrow view of what that would mean. It seems that taking a person out of his or her comfort zone can be the jump start that God provides on the journey toward discernment of one’s calling.”

A sharp eye

By now the Burroughses have learned to spot the future Christian ministers within the summer staff. “We can predict who will end up at seminary,” Colleen says. “It’s more surprising to them than it is to us.”

About 30 to 40 percent of summer staffers go on to seminary.

“There was no way to anticipate the scope of our former staffers,” David recalls, “until we started adding up the numbers to prepare to celebrate our 20th anniversary.”

What they found was stunning. More than 600 men and women have served on Passport summer staffs in 22 years. Of those, Passport is aware of 95 who currently serve in Christian ministry — in churches, denominations and parachurch organizations, and on the mission field.

At least 14 of the 95 serve as pastors of churches related to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, and — true to one original goal — six of the pastors are female.

The diaspora of Passport alums includes every conceivable church-ministry role — associate pastor, minister of music, education or spiritual formation, youth, children or families minister, community or missions minister, church planter and on and on.

Several are campus ministers or hospital chaplains. At least two are professors at Christian colleges; another is a school teacher.

Perhaps the biggest beneficiary of Passport’s 22-year journey is the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, whose congregations send more youth groups to Passport than any other body of churches.

At least two missionaries and nearly a dozen CBF staffers, regional coordinators or associates, and members of CBF governing bodies are Passport veterans.

“We are one of the main pipelines bringing youth and young adults to awareness of CBF,” David adds. “Our campers routinely learn about the work of CBF field personnel serving all over the globe.”

David, a native of Abilene, Texas, also spearheaded creation of the CBF’s Young Leaders Network, now called Current. And Colleen recently served as national moderator for CBF.

Clear distinctive

From Passport’s inception in 1993, the prominence and affirmation of women in ministry has set it apart in the summer-camp market — with consequences both good and bad.

“We have learned that our voice, and where we have chosen to stand on the issue of women as pastors, limits our broad acceptance,” David says. “There are a large number of churches that choose not to participate with us because they don’t believe a woman should preach.”

Passport’s first customers were moderate Baptist churches and youth ministers who welcomed the mainstream theological approach that shunned coercive evangelism in favor of an intellectual integrity that is open to the questioning of youth.

The Burroughses have cultivated Passport’s unique “voice” over the years, which now permeates all its products and events. “

That voice is a thoughtful theology that isn’t afraid to ask and discuss larger or more complicated issues of faith,” David explains. “Teenagers today want to know about other religions and how Christianity fits in. They hear mixed messages about the issue of same-sex marriage and want to know if their faith is accepting of their friends who have alternative lifestyles.

“Our voice reads the Bible as the story of redemption and grace, not of condemnation and legalism. Our voice is about a mission strategy that expects to meet the face of Christ in those we come to serve.”

Convinced the spiritual growth of youth is too important to be confined to summer camp, Passport started a devotional website for youth and young adults in 2001 to encourage spiritual reflection during Advent and Lent. It later expanded to daily online devotionals, called d365.org, which attracts 5,000 visitors a day and 1.8 million a year.

Parallel development

“In some ways, I think Passport has evolved as our network of churches has evolved,” David reasons. “And because we are small and nimble, we are able to alter plans to meet a need, and we are able to try things without fear.”

Creativity, flexibility and responsiveness are in the organization’s DNA, he says, and what has kept it alive. “So we try to be as responsive as we can be.”

“Just [recently], in response to the girls who were kidnapped in Nigeria, we are running a set of devotions that focus on the global need for justice for children and how we can take action on behalf of those most vulnerable among us.”

The popularity of its youth camps led to Passportkids! in 2004, using a grant from CBF global missions.

Passport’s role as a print-and-online publisher became more structured in 2011. With a $750,000 grant from the Lilly Endowment, Passport Media was started, which produces curricula for local-church use in vacation Bible schools, youth retreats and other settings.

‘The Call’

Passport has intentionally tried to reinterpret and expand how Christians view “the call” — both the call to vocational ministry and the call of Christ on every believer.

So Passport fashioned its summer-camp theme to encourage teenagers to consider ministry as a vocation. “We hoped to raise awareness that a career given to ministry is a worthwhile life focus,” David says. Another camp, co-sponsored with Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, helped those called to vocational ministry “explore what that might look like.”

But the concept of “call” is broader than that, touching every believer.

“We wanted to help youth see that their faith is a calling to minister — no matter what they chose for their life’s vocation,” David says. That led to new curricula for use in churches. “If they can practice this calling while in high school, we hope this will help them take their faith with them to the next step on their journey.”

One special weeklong summer camp, called Choices, invites teens to spend a week exploring how something they love — drama, music, art, leadership, sports, fitness or care for the environment — can interact with their faith, David says.

Passport also is committed to the idea that service and missions is part of a normative Christian experience. Almost every week of camp takes the youth out into the community on a mission project. And Passport camps go to places like Kenya and Liberia for cross-cultural discovery.

The Burroughses function as one unit in operating Passport, despite the fact their individual gifts are very different. Colleen says youth camps were David’s calling, not hers. But she followed him to seminary and later immersed herself in Passport.

“That’s what you do when you get married,” she says. “As a married couple, you don’t always follow both of your calls at the same time.”

A bigger vision

Still, like the campers, the Burroughses nurture, this daughter of missionaries listened to God to discern her own unique ministry: “I felt the urge to pursue something bigger than myself.”

It emerged suddenly in 2005, halfway around the world in central Africa, when a deadly drought threatened to kill 5 million people in Malawi, where she was raised. She knew she was supposed to help, but how?

“We just put up a website,” she recalls. Word quickly spread among the community of former Passport campers. “We just said, ‘Here’s a need. How can you help?’ And the youth figured out how to raise the money.”

“That’s exactly what Passport is about,” she says. A need arose that no one was addressing. But Passport lacked the resources. “All I had was 6,000 teenagers,” she recalls facetiously.

That informal online network of young people — predisposed toward Christian service by their Passport experience — raised $162,500 in the first year for well-drilling, pumps and irrigation projects. The Passport-affiliated nonprofit that resulted, Watering Malawi, has since raised a total of $800,000 in nine years.

“I thought Watering Malawi would be a 6-month-to-a-year relief effort,” Colleen says. “We could not have ‘watered Malawi’ without Passport. That has been the amazing, surprising thing.”

Legacy

After more than 20 years at Passport and now in their late 40s, the Burroughses are starting to look ahead to the legacy they will leave behind.

“I don’t want to take for granted that Passport will always be here,” Colleen says. “We want to make sure it’s on solid footing when we retire or go on to something else.”

Their own 15-year-old twins, Milligan and Walker, are looking forward to working in the camps one day.

“We are passionate that we want the next generation of youth to have access to a camp program like Passport and access to solid Bible studies through Passport Media,” David explains.

That has prompted the organization to launch a $1 million endowment campaign in what it hopes will secure Passport’s future. “The endowment campaign, approved by its board of directors, is Passport’s first. It’s another shift of focus for the couple that will take them out of their comfort zone. They’re confident but know the stakes are high.

Says Colleen, “If we can’t do this, we won’t last another 20 years.”

This article originally appeared in the May/June 2014 issue of Herald, our bi-monthly magazine. To find out more about the magazine, click here.

Everything from government red tape to American attitudes against immigrants pose difficulties to Baptist relief groups seeking to help thousands of immigrant children on U.S.-Mexico border.

By Jeff Brumley

Baptist disaster relief agencies are pressing hard to determine what, if anything, they can to do aid the immigrant children flooding into the nation along the southern border by the tens of thousands.

While some help has already been rendered, organizations ranging from Texas Baptist Men to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship say it’s getting harder for volunteer-based groups to get access to the young immigrants as the federal government becomes more involved. Some of them also report growing criticism from Baptists and other Americans politically opposed to the presence of undocumented foreigners in the United States.

“We have received a lot of negative comments, and most don’t leave their names and [phone] numbers,” said Terry Henderson, state disaster relief director for TBM.

Comments include accusations that providing aid to immigrants only encourages them to keep coming.

“I say you need to come here and see before you make these comments,” he said.

Not that such criticisms are keeping aid agencies, including Catholic Charities, the Salvation Army, Baptist and other churches and organizations, from sending help.

Since May, they’ve been working in Texas border cities like Brownsville, Laredo and McAllen to meet the needs of what has grown to the estimated 50,000 unaccompanied immigrant children who have crossed the border so far in 2014. In May, TBM was asked by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide volunteers to help undocumented immigrants.

They are arriving in the U.S. in desperate conditions and being housed in shelters and detention centers. The scope of the situation is being described as a major humanitarian crisis.

But there are some significant differences between the border crisis and the natural disasters many Baptist and other agencies are accustomed to handling.

‘Ready to provide compassion’

For one, it’s much more complex because it’s both a domestic and an international crisis, said Tommy Deal, national disaster response coordinator for CBF.

Deal said he’s been communicating with CBF of Texas about the border situation, but added some of the organization’s response also may come from its international disaster response operations.

Meanwhile, CBF field personnel located along the border already are working with local churches to find ways to help, he said.

However and whoever responds, Deal said, the immigration situation can definitely be considered the kind of event that calls for disaster relief.

“It can be called a man-made disaster because it’s an event that’s taxing the local communities’ resources,” Deal said.

Increased liabilities

The crisis is a challenge for relief groups because it’s being managed by several federal agencies, said Dean Miller, disaster relief coordinator for the Virginia Baptist Mission Board.

President Obama recently asked Congress for $3.7 billion to address the crisis. The money would be shared by the Health and Human Services, Justice and Homeland Security departments — all of which are managing parts of the response.

Miller said that’s different from the kinds of crises Baptist and other faith-based disaster relief groups are trained to handle.

“Some elements are similar — if we were asked to provide some temporary care for children during the day, for example,” Miller said via email. But “this is just so different [with] many more government agencies involved and the liability is increased.”

Due to those layers of jurisdiction, few know who to approach for permissions to respond — or even to learn what the specific needs are.

But the VBMB is preparing for the possibility that the government may transport immigrant children to Virginia, Miller said. He added they are also ready to respond to other states, if and when asked.

Miller said Virginia Baptists are “ready to provide compassion to an innocent group of children who need to feel the love of Christ during a difficult time.”

Limited options

Even so, statewide and national groups are feeling the pressure to act.

“We are beginning to find places along the border where churches and other organizations have been responding since all this happened — and they are getting tired,” said Marla Bearden, disaster response specialist with the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

“They are reaching out to people other than their sphere of influence for help.”

At the moment, few have access to the child immigrants because they are sequestered in government-supervised facilities. But Texas Baptists are trying to make arrangements to create travel packs to be given the youth when they are transported to other cities, including Dallas.

She said there’s also a need for Spanish-language Bibles — with both Old and New testaments — for immigrants currently being housed at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.

Otherwise, those wishing to volunteer more directly need to be patient while authorities work out if and how non-governmental agencies can help.

“We are very limited in what we can do,” Bearden said.

‘That’s the deal’

Bearden added that the border situation has a political dimension that other crisis situations do not.

“I spoke with a couple of volunteers who worked with the children, who went with the idea that we just need to turn them back,” Bearden said.

She added that their attitude didn’t last very long after arrival.

“Once they saw the conditions the children were in, it changed their hearts and it changed them.”

The children are dirty and tired and infested with lice when they arrive in the U.S., she said.

“Some of them are as young as 3 years old who came across unaccompanied,” Bearden said. “That’s pretty bad.”

There are some who can be helped more directly, Henderson added, including immigrant families who are being sent back to their native countries.

Between the time of their processing and their return by bus, they can do laundry at a TBM laundry truck in McAllen and take showers at a TBM shower trailer in Loredo.

The key is that something is being done when possible — especially when children are involved, Henderson said.

“If Jesus was standing here with us, what would he tell us to do? That sounds kind of basic, but that’s the deal,” he said.

]]>

Everything from government red tape to American attitudes against immigrants pose difficulties to Baptist relief groups seeking to help thousands of immigrant children on U.S.-Mexico border.

By Jeff Brumley

Baptist disaster relief agencies are pressing hard to determine what, if anything, they can to do aid the immigrant children flooding into the nation along the southern border by the tens of thousands.

While some help has already been rendered, organizations ranging from Texas Baptist Men to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship say it’s getting harder for volunteer-based groups to get access to the young immigrants as the federal government becomes more involved. Some of them also report growing criticism from Baptists and other Americans politically opposed to the presence of undocumented foreigners in the United States.

“We have received a lot of negative comments, and most don’t leave their names and [phone] numbers,” said Terry Henderson, state disaster relief director for TBM.

Comments include accusations that providing aid to immigrants only encourages them to keep coming.

“I say you need to come here and see before you make these comments,” he said.

Not that such criticisms are keeping aid agencies, including Catholic Charities, the Salvation Army, Baptist and other churches and organizations, from sending help.

Since May, they’ve been working in Texas border cities like Brownsville, Laredo and McAllen to meet the needs of what has grown to the estimated 50,000 unaccompanied immigrant children who have crossed the border so far in 2014. In May, TBM was asked by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide volunteers to help undocumented immigrants.

They are arriving in the U.S. in desperate conditions and being housed in shelters and detention centers. The scope of the situation is being described as a major humanitarian crisis.

But there are some significant differences between the border crisis and the natural disasters many Baptist and other agencies are accustomed to handling.

‘Ready to provide compassion’

For one, it’s much more complex because it’s both a domestic and an international crisis, said Tommy Deal, national disaster response coordinator for CBF.

Deal said he’s been communicating with CBF of Texas about the border situation, but added some of the organization’s response also may come from its international disaster response operations.

Meanwhile, CBF field personnel located along the border already are working with local churches to find ways to help, he said.

However and whoever responds, Deal said, the immigration situation can definitely be considered the kind of event that calls for disaster relief.

“It can be called a man-made disaster because it’s an event that’s taxing the local communities’ resources,” Deal said.

Increased liabilities

The crisis is a challenge for relief groups because it’s being managed by several federal agencies, said Dean Miller, disaster relief coordinator for the Virginia Baptist Mission Board.

President Obama recently asked Congress for $3.7 billion to address the crisis. The money would be shared by the Health and Human Services, Justice and Homeland Security departments — all of which are managing parts of the response.

Miller said that’s different from the kinds of crises Baptist and other faith-based disaster relief groups are trained to handle.

“Some elements are similar — if we were asked to provide some temporary care for children during the day, for example,” Miller said via email. But “this is just so different [with] many more government agencies involved and the liability is increased.”

Due to those layers of jurisdiction, few know who to approach for permissions to respond — or even to learn what the specific needs are.

But the VBMB is preparing for the possibility that the government may transport immigrant children to Virginia, Miller said. He added they are also ready to respond to other states, if and when asked.

Miller said Virginia Baptists are “ready to provide compassion to an innocent group of children who need to feel the love of Christ during a difficult time.”

Limited options

Even so, statewide and national groups are feeling the pressure to act.

“We are beginning to find places along the border where churches and other organizations have been responding since all this happened — and they are getting tired,” said Marla Bearden, disaster response specialist with the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

“They are reaching out to people other than their sphere of influence for help.”

At the moment, few have access to the child immigrants because they are sequestered in government-supervised facilities. But Texas Baptists are trying to make arrangements to create travel packs to be given the youth when they are transported to other cities, including Dallas.

She said there’s also a need for Spanish-language Bibles — with both Old and New testaments — for immigrants currently being housed at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.

Otherwise, those wishing to volunteer more directly need to be patient while authorities work out if and how non-governmental agencies can help.

“We are very limited in what we can do,” Bearden said.

‘That’s the deal’

Bearden added that the border situation has a political dimension that other crisis situations do not.

“I spoke with a couple of volunteers who worked with the children, who went with the idea that we just need to turn them back,” Bearden said.

She added that their attitude didn’t last very long after arrival.

“Once they saw the conditions the children were in, it changed their hearts and it changed them.”

The children are dirty and tired and infested with lice when they arrive in the U.S., she said.

“Some of them are as young as 3 years old who came across unaccompanied,” Bearden said. “That’s pretty bad.”

There are some who can be helped more directly, Henderson added, including immigrant families who are being sent back to their native countries.

Between the time of their processing and their return by bus, they can do laundry at a TBM laundry truck in McAllen and take showers at a TBM shower trailer in Loredo.

The key is that something is being done when possible — especially when children are involved, Henderson said.

“If Jesus was standing here with us, what would he tell us to do? That sounds kind of basic, but that’s the deal,” he said.

Though I am serving this year as theologian-in-residence for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, this reflection on the annual CBF General Assembly this past week represents my independent, unvetted opinion.

I write on the day of the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, culminating its 2013-14 term. This is what Twitter is spewing as I write. Report: “Religious Liberty Wins, Religious Liberty Wins," scream the fans of the 5-4 decision on Monday. White House: “Ruling Jeopardizes the Health of Women.” Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas): Hundreds more lawsuits will fight the White House’s “incredible assault” on religious liberty. Noah Shachtman: “With Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court just declared themselves America’s new high priests.” Planned Parenthood: “This is about justice, and we’re fighting back.” Samuel Rodriguez: “SCOTUS affirmed the God-given right of conscience and religious liberty.” My personal over-the-top favorite, from @Readersaresmart: a picture of the majority five judges today with the heading, “The faces of fascism.”

Meanwhile, CBF’s tweet of the morning: “Assembly Blog — Try This at Home — Five Ways to Help Your Church Learn.”

Other tweets from CBF General Assembly late last week included features on new efforts at church planting/starting, a new CBF Fellows cohort, worship as narrative ritual, successfully negotiating the search process, the Together for Hope ministry and the commissioning service for chaplains, pastoral counselors and field personnel.

Suffice it to say that few such tweets were likely to go viral in the global twitterverse. Not a one of them had anything directly to do with the culture wars. Therefore by definition they were of little interest in the shrill American public square circa 2014.

But those who were at the General Assembly would know that publicly significant convictions were indeed articulated and practiced at that meeting:

• South Africa anti-apartheid leader Rev. Dr. Allan Boesak offered a morally stirring, and intellectually demanding, analysis of the connections between confession, forgiveness, justice and social reconciliation. His cry that “justice is indivisible” challenged CBF listeners to consider just how thoroughgoing our commitment to the marginalized will turn out to be.

• Civil rights leader and former UN Ambassador Andrew Young reminisced about his service in the Carter Administration, and the national humility that President Carter demanded of all who would represent the United States in international venues. He called on listeners to fight for the well-being of the world’s two billion brutally victimized women.

• New Baptist Covenant leader Hannah McMahan described the mission of NBC as building bridges between historically racially divided churches all over the country, mainly through joint service and mission work. Several case studies were offered in a video presentation.

• CBF Executive Coordinator Suzii Paynter described the Fellowship’s ramped up domestic and international advocacy work, including efforts on immigration and predatory lending as well as on behalf of religious liberty and the well-being of women and girls.

• Speakers in multiple venues emphasized opening new doors for women in ministry and equipping women for success in ministry.

What I saw at CBF General Assembly is a voluntary, amicable community of congregations, ministries, fellowships, educational institutions and individuals who are seeking to carry forward a wide variety of forms of Christian ministry and mission, mainly focused on humble congregational work carried out by both women and men and serving those the world cares least about.

If CBF has a politics, or a social witness, as of 2014 it could be described non-triumphalist, consensus-driven, service-oriented, and gender- and race-inclusive.

CBF is not trying to be in charge of America or the world and doesn’t project itself as having all the answers. However, it is slowly edging into advocacy in areas where the fellowship is able to find consensus.

CBF wants to make a difference through serving the least of these, as incarnationally and teachably as possible. It doesn’t seek headlines about serving in the world’s neediest places, but it is doing so.

CBF was born defending women in ministry and will continue to seek advances on that front, even while conservative American religion becomes more deeply entrenched in patriarchal leadership models.

And, though primarily white, CBF is trying its best to overcome American and Christian racial divisions through slow, patient racial reconciliation work.

If America and its religion is destined to continually fracture along right-left lines, and if that is the religion news story that everyone wants to talk about, then this particular religious community will be of little national interest.

But perhaps the very existence of a religious community — primarily located in the politically hot-blooded South — that doesn’t fit this narrative, but is instead doing the slow, organic work of ministry, service, advocacy, inclusion and reconciliation, is in fact a story worth telling.

Though I am serving this year as theologian-in-residence for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, this reflection on the annual CBF General Assembly this past week represents my independent, unvetted opinion.

I write on the day of the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, culminating its 2013-14 term. This is what Twitter is spewing as I write. Report: “Religious Liberty Wins, Religious Liberty Wins," scream the fans of the 5-4 decision on Monday. White House: “Ruling Jeopardizes the Health of Women.” Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas): Hundreds more lawsuits will fight the White House’s “incredible assault” on religious liberty. Noah Shachtman: “With Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court just declared themselves America’s new high priests.” Planned Parenthood: “This is about justice, and we’re fighting back.” Samuel Rodriguez: “SCOTUS affirmed the God-given right of conscience and religious liberty.” My personal over-the-top favorite, from @Readersaresmart: a picture of the majority five judges today with the heading, “The faces of fascism.”

Meanwhile, CBF’s tweet of the morning: “Assembly Blog — Try This at Home — Five Ways to Help Your Church Learn.”

Other tweets from CBF General Assembly late last week included features on new efforts at church planting/starting, a new CBF Fellows cohort, worship as narrative ritual, successfully negotiating the search process, the Together for Hope ministry and the commissioning service for chaplains, pastoral counselors and field personnel.

Suffice it to say that few such tweets were likely to go viral in the global twitterverse. Not a one of them had anything directly to do with the culture wars. Therefore by definition they were of little interest in the shrill American public square circa 2014.

But those who were at the General Assembly would know that publicly significant convictions were indeed articulated and practiced at that meeting:

• South Africa anti-apartheid leader Rev. Dr. Allan Boesak offered a morally stirring, and intellectually demanding, analysis of the connections between confession, forgiveness, justice and social reconciliation. His cry that “justice is indivisible” challenged CBF listeners to consider just how thoroughgoing our commitment to the marginalized will turn out to be.

• Civil rights leader and former UN Ambassador Andrew Young reminisced about his service in the Carter Administration, and the national humility that President Carter demanded of all who would represent the United States in international venues. He called on listeners to fight for the well-being of the world’s two billion brutally victimized women.

• New Baptist Covenant leader Hannah McMahan described the mission of NBC as building bridges between historically racially divided churches all over the country, mainly through joint service and mission work. Several case studies were offered in a video presentation.

• CBF Executive Coordinator Suzii Paynter described the Fellowship’s ramped up domestic and international advocacy work, including efforts on immigration and predatory lending as well as on behalf of religious liberty and the well-being of women and girls.

• Speakers in multiple venues emphasized opening new doors for women in ministry and equipping women for success in ministry.

What I saw at CBF General Assembly is a voluntary, amicable community of congregations, ministries, fellowships, educational institutions and individuals who are seeking to carry forward a wide variety of forms of Christian ministry and mission, mainly focused on humble congregational work carried out by both women and men and serving those the world cares least about.

If CBF has a politics, or a social witness, as of 2014 it could be described non-triumphalist, consensus-driven, service-oriented, and gender- and race-inclusive.

CBF is not trying to be in charge of America or the world and doesn’t project itself as having all the answers. However, it is slowly edging into advocacy in areas where the fellowship is able to find consensus.

CBF wants to make a difference through serving the least of these, as incarnationally and teachably as possible. It doesn’t seek headlines about serving in the world’s neediest places, but it is doing so.

CBF was born defending women in ministry and will continue to seek advances on that front, even while conservative American religion becomes more deeply entrenched in patriarchal leadership models.

And, though primarily white, CBF is trying its best to overcome American and Christian racial divisions through slow, patient racial reconciliation work.

If America and its religion is destined to continually fracture along right-left lines, and if that is the religion news story that everyone wants to talk about, then this particular religious community will be of little national interest.

But perhaps the very existence of a religious community — primarily located in the politically hot-blooded South — that doesn’t fit this narrative, but is instead doing the slow, organic work of ministry, service, advocacy, inclusion and reconciliation, is in fact a story worth telling.

Recent stabbings reportedly inspired by a dark fictional character have many blaming parents and social media. But the problem goes much deeper than that, says a divinity school professor.

By Jeff Brumley

Baptist educator Brian Foreman believes many Americans are living in the moment — only, not in a good way.

Rather than being in the present in the spiritual sense, they are narrowly focused on events in a manner that robs them of historical and social perspective, says Foreman, a social media educator, church consultant and adjunct professor of Christian education at Campbell University Divinity School in North Carolina.

Foreman penned a blog on the topic in the wake of recent stabbings by American children reportedly inspired by a fictional character called Slender Man, who lurks in woods to abduct and kill children.

In Wisconsin last week, two girls repeatedly stabbed a friend in an attack designed to please the internet meme, media reports said. Another such attack occurred over the weekend in Ohio, this time by a 13-year-old against her mother.

Assuming the reports are accurate, it’s a clear case of the youth having a distorted image of the online character and its importance in their lives, Foreman says.

But just as narrowly focused are the critics in online forums and comments sections, which largely blame parents for not monitoring their children’s reading and social media habits. Such popular critiques miss a wide range of other contributing factors, Foreman says, which relegates those observers to a prison of thinking and blaming.

“In contemporary American society, we tend to be prisoners of the moment,” he says.

ABPnews/Herald spoke with Foreman about that concept, and also about the blog he penned for a local television station on the subject. Here is some of what he had to say.

So, what do you mean by “prisoners of the moment”?

I’ll give an example from the SEC, from football. There will be a great game and people will call it ‘the game of the century.’ But every season there is a ‘game of the century.’ We get caught up in the moment and don’t keep things in perspective. It’s also true about larger societal issues and politics.

You hear it in the older generations, too. They’ll say ‘these kids are taking us to hell in a hand basket.’ The problem is, your parents said that about your generation, too.

And you’re saying that’s what happened with these girls who did the stabbing?

Them, but not only them. It’s in the way people are responding to that genre, blaming it on the web site. There’s that teenage aspect and there’s the adult reaction to say, ‘Look at how harmful that is to our kids.’ It’s not just social media or fiction, but there’s something bigger underlying the current phenomenon in our society.

What is that “something bigger”?

Well, I do think parents and the Internet have some responsibility in this. There is a parent’s accountability for their kids and they need to be paying attention as well. These girls were losing their grip on reality and somewhere along the way parents or teachers or friends should have noticed a change in their behavior.

Do the content providers share in the blame?

Probably so. They were partly at fault. But were they really? When you read the comments on the article, they jump on the parents and on the writers. But it’s just not that simple. There is a mental health issue here that needs to be explored as well.

Is there anything parents can do?

From a parenting and relational standpoint, they can pay attention and know their children well enough to know when their behaviors start to change. ... Know what’s influencing your kids. ... We can’t know all of that, but be involved enough to know when something is going on.

What can churches or youth ministers do?

From the congregational side, we need to be supporting systems and institutions that make it acceptable to talk about subjects that are taboo in our culture. ... Why aren’t we talking more about mental health? Why aren’t we talking about making good choices despite difficult situations? So many of our teenagers are hearing answers to questions they aren’t even asking.

Are churches equipped to talk about mental health?

We need to be talking about how we can support families who are struggling with mental health issues. ... The more we don’t talk about it, the bigger the problem becomes. ... If we aren’t talking about the health of our students, our congregations and even our clergy, then we’re allowing something to continue eating away at our individuals and at the Kingdom.

]]>

Recent stabbings reportedly inspired by a dark fictional character have many blaming parents and social media. But the problem goes much deeper than that, says a divinity school professor.

By Jeff Brumley

Baptist educator Brian Foreman believes many Americans are living in the moment — only, not in a good way.

Rather than being in the present in the spiritual sense, they are narrowly focused on events in a manner that robs them of historical and social perspective, says Foreman, a social media educator, church consultant and adjunct professor of Christian education at Campbell University Divinity School in North Carolina.

Foreman penned a blog on the topic in the wake of recent stabbings by American children reportedly inspired by a fictional character called Slender Man, who lurks in woods to abduct and kill children.

In Wisconsin last week, two girls repeatedly stabbed a friend in an attack designed to please the internet meme, media reports said. Another such attack occurred over the weekend in Ohio, this time by a 13-year-old against her mother.

Assuming the reports are accurate, it’s a clear case of the youth having a distorted image of the online character and its importance in their lives, Foreman says.

But just as narrowly focused are the critics in online forums and comments sections, which largely blame parents for not monitoring their children’s reading and social media habits. Such popular critiques miss a wide range of other contributing factors, Foreman says, which relegates those observers to a prison of thinking and blaming.

“In contemporary American society, we tend to be prisoners of the moment,” he says.

ABPnews/Herald spoke with Foreman about that concept, and also about the blog he penned for a local television station on the subject. Here is some of what he had to say.

So, what do you mean by “prisoners of the moment”?

I’ll give an example from the SEC, from football. There will be a great game and people will call it ‘the game of the century.’ But every season there is a ‘game of the century.’ We get caught up in the moment and don’t keep things in perspective. It’s also true about larger societal issues and politics.

You hear it in the older generations, too. They’ll say ‘these kids are taking us to hell in a hand basket.’ The problem is, your parents said that about your generation, too.

And you’re saying that’s what happened with these girls who did the stabbing?

Them, but not only them. It’s in the way people are responding to that genre, blaming it on the web site. There’s that teenage aspect and there’s the adult reaction to say, ‘Look at how harmful that is to our kids.’ It’s not just social media or fiction, but there’s something bigger underlying the current phenomenon in our society.

What is that “something bigger”?

Well, I do think parents and the Internet have some responsibility in this. There is a parent’s accountability for their kids and they need to be paying attention as well. These girls were losing their grip on reality and somewhere along the way parents or teachers or friends should have noticed a change in their behavior.

Do the content providers share in the blame?

Probably so. They were partly at fault. But were they really? When you read the comments on the article, they jump on the parents and on the writers. But it’s just not that simple. There is a mental health issue here that needs to be explored as well.

Is there anything parents can do?

From a parenting and relational standpoint, they can pay attention and know their children well enough to know when their behaviors start to change. ... Know what’s influencing your kids. ... We can’t know all of that, but be involved enough to know when something is going on.

What can churches or youth ministers do?

From the congregational side, we need to be supporting systems and institutions that make it acceptable to talk about subjects that are taboo in our culture. ... Why aren’t we talking more about mental health? Why aren’t we talking about making good choices despite difficult situations? So many of our teenagers are hearing answers to questions they aren’t even asking.

Are churches equipped to talk about mental health?

We need to be talking about how we can support families who are struggling with mental health issues. ... The more we don’t talk about it, the bigger the problem becomes. ... If we aren’t talking about the health of our students, our congregations and even our clergy, then we’re allowing something to continue eating away at our individuals and at the Kingdom.

Not long ago I had the privilege of officiating at a wedding. It had been a while since this ministerial task had fallen to me.

This particular assignment reflected many of the trends affecting American religion in post-Christian America, and thus many of the challenges facing Christian ministers — as well as the timeless responsibilities of any Christian minister in any age.

Ideally, a Christian couple marries in the local church that they attend and where their young marriage will be nurtured. In my view, the ideal officiant is a minister in that congregation who has a relationship with the couple and will help in their Christian nurture in years to come.

But this couple, like many millennials, had inconsistent church experience and had been turned off by much that passes for Christianity in the South. That turned out to be true for many in the audience as well, even in a wedding conducted in the deep South. I became the official representative of Christianity, for better or for worse (pun intended).

The premarital counseling became a first opportunity to offer some strategic nudges. I felt the responsibility to ask the couple where they were spiritually and what role they envisioned faith playing in their marriage. Out of these conversations the couple determined to find a church that they could join together. This did happen, thankfully, but no one from that church was yet a part of this couple’s life. The wedding became an opportunity for the couple to make a turn toward Christian commitment, with the long-term outcome up to them.

In designing the wedding service, I am always acutely vigilant about the ceremony simply becoming religious babble. I always ask the couple how they want their wedding to be conducted. What kind of promises do they want to make to each other? What biblical texts do they want read and preached? What music performed? What type of language employed? The overall issue is what type of wedding service reflects their own commitments and communicates what they want to say to God, each other, and the gathered community.

I am always aware of red lines which I am unwilling ever to cross. For example, I believe that Christian marriage is by God’s design a lifetime covenant. So I will never perform a wedding in which a couple wants to articulate a less binding commitment such as “as long as we both shall love.” Nor would I be willing to articulate the more binding language for a couple if I have reason to believe they are only going through the motions. This means I don’t do weddings for couples who aren’t interested in covenantal Christian marriage.

This still leaves plenty of room for personalizing the language of a wedding ceremony. Talking through the ingredients of the ceremony becomes an occasion to do some meaningful theological and ethical teaching. Sometimes, with the consent of the couple, I make the actual wedding ceremony an occasion for instruction to the gathered community as well.

For example, I like using a “declaration of consent” just before the exchange of vows, and to make both an opportunity for teaching. I might say something like this: “Marriage is a sacred covenant that must be undertaken freely and not under coercion. In just a few moments this couple will make a series of promises to each other. These covenant vows will restrict their freedom of action considerably in years to come. They will promise a lifetime of love, honor and fidelity to each other. I am about to ask them whether today they freely make the binding promises they are about to make.”

Then when it is time for the exchange of vows I sometimes say this: “This couple is about to change their lives forever by making a series of sacred vows to God and each other. X and Y, listen very closely to the vows you are making and feel their gravity. These are covenant promises made publicly and therefore accountably before this gathered community. Congregation, listen just as closely, pondering the implications of these promises for this couple and for yourself.”

In every wedding I try to “tie the knot good and hard,” as an old mentor once told me. I try to communicate to the couple and the congregation that marriage is not just an expensive wedding leading to a somewhat more permanent kind of dating relationship. Marriage carries covenantal, ecclesial, intergenerational and social responsibilities. The married couple has obligations to God, each other, the church, previous and future generations of their families, and society as a whole. It’s grown-up stuff, and only grown-ups should undertake it.

I honor those who feel ready to make that leap. I try to help them connect to Scripture and to the history of the church. I want them to know that they are making an existential change in their lives as they make a binding-even-when-it’s-hard lifetime covenant. And I hope that everyone present catches a glimpse of the loving-yet-demanding God who is the giver of every good gift, including marriage.

]]>On the responsibility, and opportunity, of officiating a wedding in post-Christian America.

By David Gushee

Follow David: @dpgushee

Not long ago I had the privilege of officiating at a wedding. It had been a while since this ministerial task had fallen to me.

This particular assignment reflected many of the trends affecting American religion in post-Christian America, and thus many of the challenges facing Christian ministers — as well as the timeless responsibilities of any Christian minister in any age.

Ideally, a Christian couple marries in the local church that they attend and where their young marriage will be nurtured. In my view, the ideal officiant is a minister in that congregation who has a relationship with the couple and will help in their Christian nurture in years to come.

But this couple, like many millennials, had inconsistent church experience and had been turned off by much that passes for Christianity in the South. That turned out to be true for many in the audience as well, even in a wedding conducted in the deep South. I became the official representative of Christianity, for better or for worse (pun intended).

The premarital counseling became a first opportunity to offer some strategic nudges. I felt the responsibility to ask the couple where they were spiritually and what role they envisioned faith playing in their marriage. Out of these conversations the couple determined to find a church that they could join together. This did happen, thankfully, but no one from that church was yet a part of this couple’s life. The wedding became an opportunity for the couple to make a turn toward Christian commitment, with the long-term outcome up to them.

In designing the wedding service, I am always acutely vigilant about the ceremony simply becoming religious babble. I always ask the couple how they want their wedding to be conducted. What kind of promises do they want to make to each other? What biblical texts do they want read and preached? What music performed? What type of language employed? The overall issue is what type of wedding service reflects their own commitments and communicates what they want to say to God, each other, and the gathered community.

I am always aware of red lines which I am unwilling ever to cross. For example, I believe that Christian marriage is by God’s design a lifetime covenant. So I will never perform a wedding in which a couple wants to articulate a less binding commitment such as “as long as we both shall love.” Nor would I be willing to articulate the more binding language for a couple if I have reason to believe they are only going through the motions. This means I don’t do weddings for couples who aren’t interested in covenantal Christian marriage.

This still leaves plenty of room for personalizing the language of a wedding ceremony. Talking through the ingredients of the ceremony becomes an occasion to do some meaningful theological and ethical teaching. Sometimes, with the consent of the couple, I make the actual wedding ceremony an occasion for instruction to the gathered community as well.

For example, I like using a “declaration of consent” just before the exchange of vows, and to make both an opportunity for teaching. I might say something like this: “Marriage is a sacred covenant that must be undertaken freely and not under coercion. In just a few moments this couple will make a series of promises to each other. These covenant vows will restrict their freedom of action considerably in years to come. They will promise a lifetime of love, honor and fidelity to each other. I am about to ask them whether today they freely make the binding promises they are about to make.”

Then when it is time for the exchange of vows I sometimes say this: “This couple is about to change their lives forever by making a series of sacred vows to God and each other. X and Y, listen very closely to the vows you are making and feel their gravity. These are covenant promises made publicly and therefore accountably before this gathered community. Congregation, listen just as closely, pondering the implications of these promises for this couple and for yourself.”

In every wedding I try to “tie the knot good and hard,” as an old mentor once told me. I try to communicate to the couple and the congregation that marriage is not just an expensive wedding leading to a somewhat more permanent kind of dating relationship. Marriage carries covenantal, ecclesial, intergenerational and social responsibilities. The married couple has obligations to God, each other, the church, previous and future generations of their families, and society as a whole. It’s grown-up stuff, and only grown-ups should undertake it.

I honor those who feel ready to make that leap. I try to help them connect to Scripture and to the history of the church. I want them to know that they are making an existential change in their lives as they make a binding-even-when-it’s-hard lifetime covenant. And I hope that everyone present catches a glimpse of the loving-yet-demanding God who is the giver of every good gift, including marriage.

Jack Glasgow has been the pastor at Zebulon Baptist Church in North Carolina for 32 years — and he was part-time there for five years before that. Experts say such longevity is very healthy — and rare — for today’s congregations.

By Jeff Brumley

Jack Glasgow has seen things at Zebulon Baptist Church that fewer and fewer modern pastors have seen — or likely ever will see.

Things like shepherding members of his North Carolina congregation from birth to ministry, and others from ministry to their deaths.

It comes with the territory when you preach from the same pulpit for more than three decades, he says.

“We had a young woman who was chair of congregational deacons,” said Glasgow, 58. “When I came to the church, she was in the 4-year-old class. That really is an amazing blessing.”

That’s especially true in an age when the washout rate for new pastors is 50 percent in the first five years of ministry. The average pastoral career is just under 15 years.

“That’s a pretty sobering statistic,” Wilson said.

Another is that only one in 10 clergy actually retire from local church positions, due both to burnout and to a number leaving the pulpit for teaching and other forms of ministry.

Churches where a pastor has served more than 15-20 years often share one important trait with their pastors, Wilson said: Healthy emotional and spiritual lives.

“These are pastors who set good boundaries, have spiritual depth, come from stable families and know how to take care of themselves emotionally and physically,” Wilson said.

“And they know how to deal with people — they have very good people skills.”

Glasgow spared some time recently to speak with ABPnews/Herald about his longevity at Zebulon Baptist, how he pulled off such a rare feat and his plans for the future.

How and where did you hear your calling to the pastorate?

I was in college at Georgia Tech. I was majoring in economics and probably thought I was going to go to law school, but I was very engaged in my home church, Briarlake Baptist Church in Decatur, [Ga.,] which gave me fantastic opportunities as a college student to exercise ministry gifts teaching Sunday school, recreation ministry, leading Bible studies for youth .... In all of those ministry experiences I was really discovering my passion for ministry and the church and by the spring of my junior year ... I made it public at the church that I felt called to the ministry and planned to go to seminary after graduation.

What church or churches did you serve before finally arriving at Zebulon Baptist?

Zebulon Baptist is the only church I have ever served .... I started here on Oct. 1, 1977, working part-time in youth and education while at Southeastern Seminary. When I finished my M.Div. in 1980, I stayed on while I worked on my master of theology in Christian ethics. Then the senior minister, Dr. Charles Edwards Sr., was called to a church in Winston-Salem [N.C.]. I was the interim for seven months, and at the end of that they asked if I would consider being the senior pastor. I felt that was what God was calling me to be. I became the pastor in November of 1981.

Was the church a very different place, both in facilities and people, then compared to now?

It’s changed quite a bit over the years. None of the buildings that were here when I came in 1977 are here on the campus anymore ..... We built an education building in 1979 and a new sanctuary in 1993, and in 2003 we purchased a shopping center behind the church and it’s now our fellowship hall, offices and adult education spaces .... The size of the congregation has probably grown from a little under 500 to close to 900. Total membership is 1,130.

What about the people you met when you came here — there must have been a lot of changes there, too.

It’s been wonderful to share such a long portion of persons’ lives with them as their pastor. I’ll be doing a funeral this afternoon [April 4] for a beloved church member who was 83 years old .... She was 47 when I came to the church. Her youngest of three sons had just graduated from high school and was a college freshman. I have been with her through all of that. I was there for her retirement and her husband’s retirement and her husband’s death .... It’s amazing to be able to enjoy such a long-term relationship with someone like that.

There were probably people who were children when you arrived, and you’ve seen them grow.

There have been a number of people for whom I was present for their birth, I was the pastor who baptized them, done their weddings and been there for the birth of their children.

How has your ministry been impacted by staff members and ministry interns who have come and gone through the years?

This is a great learning church and affirming of young ministers. But they have also helped me. One of them is Chris Aho, [now pastor at Oxford (N.C.) Baptist Church] who was on our staff for five years in the early 2000s. I’ve always said he was my ‘professor of postmodernity.’ He helped me understand young adults and he really helped me to interpret the culture better. I became a much better minister just learning from him and he was learning about a traditional church from me.

Do you have many colleagues who have your length of tenure in the pulpit?

I’m probably the only one I know who has been at one church for 36 years and pastor for 32. But I am finding tenure is lengthening .... I have a lot of colleagues with 25 or 15 years in the same place. I think that’s a good thing.

Is it good? Can’t long tenures like that get stale for everyone involved?

If you are going to make a long-term pastorate work, then you are going to have to learn how to grow and be creative. ... If you do the same thing every year, you are going to grow stale and the congregation is going to tire. ... The trust in leadership rises over time and the church is able to do some things I couldn’t do if it had had a series of 4- and 5-year pastorates.

How did you manage it?

I never had a time where I felt I had to get out because I wasn’t enjoying the work or the work was failing the congregation. Of course, everyone has bad days and goes through tough periods. ... I have had the ability when maybe things weren’t going that well ... to move beyond that.

Did you consider going to other churches?

I have felt like I have needed to be open to God leading in another direction. ... There have been conversations with several congregations to move on ... and two invited me to preach trial sermons ... in both of those cases, I actually had a meeting with [Zebulon] church members and leaders and asked them to pray for me and asked them to talk with me about where they saw the church and our future if I stay. ... I know every pastor can’t do that. ... In both cases they didn’t do any begging for me to stay but said they felt my leadership was effective and we had a clear vision of where we are going in our future. ... After a lot of prayer I ended up staying where I am called to stay.

Thinking of retirement?

I’ll be 59 in June and if my health stays strong and the congregation is healthy, I can see going until the 65-66 range.

]]>

Jack Glasgow has been the pastor at Zebulon Baptist Church in North Carolina for 32 years — and he was part-time there for five years before that. Experts say such longevity is very healthy — and rare — for today’s congregations.

By Jeff Brumley

Jack Glasgow has seen things at Zebulon Baptist Church that fewer and fewer modern pastors have seen — or likely ever will see.

Things like shepherding members of his North Carolina congregation from birth to ministry, and others from ministry to their deaths.

It comes with the territory when you preach from the same pulpit for more than three decades, he says.

“We had a young woman who was chair of congregational deacons,” said Glasgow, 58. “When I came to the church, she was in the 4-year-old class. That really is an amazing blessing.”

That’s especially true in an age when the washout rate for new pastors is 50 percent in the first five years of ministry. The average pastoral career is just under 15 years.

“That’s a pretty sobering statistic,” Wilson said.

Another is that only one in 10 clergy actually retire from local church positions, due both to burnout and to a number leaving the pulpit for teaching and other forms of ministry.

Churches where a pastor has served more than 15-20 years often share one important trait with their pastors, Wilson said: Healthy emotional and spiritual lives.

“These are pastors who set good boundaries, have spiritual depth, come from stable families and know how to take care of themselves emotionally and physically,” Wilson said.

“And they know how to deal with people — they have very good people skills.”

Glasgow spared some time recently to speak with ABPnews/Herald about his longevity at Zebulon Baptist, how he pulled off such a rare feat and his plans for the future.

How and where did you hear your calling to the pastorate?

I was in college at Georgia Tech. I was majoring in economics and probably thought I was going to go to law school, but I was very engaged in my home church, Briarlake Baptist Church in Decatur, [Ga.,] which gave me fantastic opportunities as a college student to exercise ministry gifts teaching Sunday school, recreation ministry, leading Bible studies for youth .... In all of those ministry experiences I was really discovering my passion for ministry and the church and by the spring of my junior year ... I made it public at the church that I felt called to the ministry and planned to go to seminary after graduation.

What church or churches did you serve before finally arriving at Zebulon Baptist?

Zebulon Baptist is the only church I have ever served .... I started here on Oct. 1, 1977, working part-time in youth and education while at Southeastern Seminary. When I finished my M.Div. in 1980, I stayed on while I worked on my master of theology in Christian ethics. Then the senior minister, Dr. Charles Edwards Sr., was called to a church in Winston-Salem [N.C.]. I was the interim for seven months, and at the end of that they asked if I would consider being the senior pastor. I felt that was what God was calling me to be. I became the pastor in November of 1981.

Was the church a very different place, both in facilities and people, then compared to now?

It’s changed quite a bit over the years. None of the buildings that were here when I came in 1977 are here on the campus anymore ..... We built an education building in 1979 and a new sanctuary in 1993, and in 2003 we purchased a shopping center behind the church and it’s now our fellowship hall, offices and adult education spaces .... The size of the congregation has probably grown from a little under 500 to close to 900. Total membership is 1,130.

What about the people you met when you came here — there must have been a lot of changes there, too.

It’s been wonderful to share such a long portion of persons’ lives with them as their pastor. I’ll be doing a funeral this afternoon [April 4] for a beloved church member who was 83 years old .... She was 47 when I came to the church. Her youngest of three sons had just graduated from high school and was a college freshman. I have been with her through all of that. I was there for her retirement and her husband’s retirement and her husband’s death .... It’s amazing to be able to enjoy such a long-term relationship with someone like that.

There were probably people who were children when you arrived, and you’ve seen them grow.

There have been a number of people for whom I was present for their birth, I was the pastor who baptized them, done their weddings and been there for the birth of their children.

How has your ministry been impacted by staff members and ministry interns who have come and gone through the years?

This is a great learning church and affirming of young ministers. But they have also helped me. One of them is Chris Aho, [now pastor at Oxford (N.C.) Baptist Church] who was on our staff for five years in the early 2000s. I’ve always said he was my ‘professor of postmodernity.’ He helped me understand young adults and he really helped me to interpret the culture better. I became a much better minister just learning from him and he was learning about a traditional church from me.

Do you have many colleagues who have your length of tenure in the pulpit?

I’m probably the only one I know who has been at one church for 36 years and pastor for 32. But I am finding tenure is lengthening .... I have a lot of colleagues with 25 or 15 years in the same place. I think that’s a good thing.

Is it good? Can’t long tenures like that get stale for everyone involved?

If you are going to make a long-term pastorate work, then you are going to have to learn how to grow and be creative. ... If you do the same thing every year, you are going to grow stale and the congregation is going to tire. ... The trust in leadership rises over time and the church is able to do some things I couldn’t do if it had had a series of 4- and 5-year pastorates.

How did you manage it?

I never had a time where I felt I had to get out because I wasn’t enjoying the work or the work was failing the congregation. Of course, everyone has bad days and goes through tough periods. ... I have had the ability when maybe things weren’t going that well ... to move beyond that.

Did you consider going to other churches?

I have felt like I have needed to be open to God leading in another direction. ... There have been conversations with several congregations to move on ... and two invited me to preach trial sermons ... in both of those cases, I actually had a meeting with [Zebulon] church members and leaders and asked them to pray for me and asked them to talk with me about where they saw the church and our future if I stay. ... I know every pastor can’t do that. ... In both cases they didn’t do any begging for me to stay but said they felt my leadership was effective and we had a clear vision of where we are going in our future. ... After a lot of prayer I ended up staying where I am called to stay.

Thinking of retirement?

I’ll be 59 in June and if my health stays strong and the congregation is healthy, I can see going until the 65-66 range.

Increasingly, mission trips are evaluated not only by the impact on the target area, but on those who minister. It’s a shift in attitudes toward domestic and international outreach.

By Jeff Brumley

It’s usually called a mission trip when a group of college students and their campus minister visit a ministry located in a struggling out-of-state neighborhood.

But that’s not what a group of Clemson University undergrads and their leader are calling this week’s visit to Touching Miami with Love, a ministry with Baptist ties located in one of South Florida’s toughest neighborhoods.

Instead, they’re calling it a pilgrimage.

“A pilgrimage is to a site, and in this case what we’re saying is that there is potential for sacred moments to occur in whatever places we travel to,” said Casey Callahan, the campus minister of the Cooperative Student Fellowship at the South Carolina university.

Callahan, who wrote on the topic last month, said the switch in terminology is much more than a clever rhetorical device, and instead reflects an altogether new way of conceiving service trips.

“Before there was an element that the people stepping off the bus have all the answers and all the power and are coming to the rescue,” he said. “It ... keeps them as lesser-than folks who can only receive and have nothing to offer.”

Now the goal is to help participants realize it is they who may come away transformed by their involvement, said Callahan, also the minister of students and mission at First Baptist Church of Clemson.

“It’s to change their awareness of the world, their perspective on what it means to be human and live in a certain place.”

Such views of mission are becoming increasingly common in American churches and are beginning to shift attitudes toward domestic and overseas outreach in often radical ways.

‘Toxic charity’

The evolution in thinking about missions began years ago among international missionaries concerned that their efforts were doing more harm than good. More recently it’s been catching domestically and is growing, said Bob Lupton, author of the 2011 book Toxic Charity.

“I’m hearing from churches and groups all over the country,” he said. “It feels to me like a movement is astir into developmental charity and away from one-way charity.”

Many, including Callahan, are inspired by recent books like Lupton’s to see previous mission efforts as more harmful than good when teams simply visit an area, do some work, then leave.

“That kind of charity is not moving the poor out of poverty, it is perpetuating poverty,” Lupton said.

And that is the definition of “toxic charity,” he added.

“It produces dependency and erodes worth ethic,” he said. “That kind of one-way giving tends to diminish people rather than move them out of poverty.”

Ministries ‘in a bind’

One force resisting this change, however, are some ministries and organizations that depend heavily on the manpower and other resources that generally come with the quick-hit mission teams.

“Folks on the receiving end are in a bind,” Lupton said. “They need the money that groups like this bring, but they also know they are spending a lot of their time doing volunteer coordination.”

But other organizations are beginning to embrace the new paradigm on missions, seeing that historic ways of operating were keeping the very people they exist to help in continuous poverty, Lupton said.

“It’s an internal conflict but it’s increasingly the groups who ... tend to be more mature who are saying ‘we are about developing people, developing long-term relationships and outside involvement doesn’t accomplish that.’”

'We need local people'

That’s been a growing awareness at Touching Miami with Love, a multi-services ministry for adults and children in the city’s crime- and poverty-plagued Overtown area.

Assistant Director Angel Pittman said the organization has already begun limiting the number of visiting groups it will host annually, choosing instead to hire former clients and to develop a more consistent volunteer base.

“We love [visiting] people to come along side us because they provide energy and support and they get some practical hands-on experience,” Pittman said. “But we need local people, right here, volunteering day in and day out.”

Decreasing dependency on outside groups means Touching Miami with Love can be more selective in the number and size of groups it accepts. Pittman said what used to be 40- and 50-member groups is down — as in the case of the Clemson students — in the 20s now.

“I say the mission trip is fine, but only if it leads you to go back to your own community to implement what you’ve learned here,” Pittman said.

‘Open our eyes, spiritually’

That message is one that a number of the Clemson students said they heard loud and clear from Callahan and Pittman.

“Casey pointed out that a lot of times it’s really difficult for us as majority, middle-class white students ... to go into a trip like this and not think we are helping these poor, marginalized people,” said senior and First Baptist Church member Emily Moeller, 21.

“What I like about the term ‘pilgrimage’ is it breaks that stereotype of spring break trips — it is us who are coming here to learn,” she said.

During their visit this week, the Clemson students are performing a lot of the tasks typical of college spring break mission trips, including light construction and remodeling, cleaning and organizing donations and working with children attending after-school programs.

But it didn’t feel like such trips and tasks typically do, Laura Drbohlav, 23, said after spending Monday morning cutting and installing insulation at Touching Miami with Love.

“I’m here to help, but I’m also here to be accepting of their culture and to get something from them,” Drbohlav said. That something, she added, was how to live in community with neighbors in ways she doesn’t experience in her college community.

“These people can open our eyes spiritually in a way that other people can’t do, and they show us how to live in a real, true community.”

That kind of awareness will make this group of students better in their ministries back home, Callahan said.

“We need to be able to step outside our comfort zones and see things from a different perspective,” he said. “We need these experiences to help us be better Christians in our communities.”

]]>

Increasingly, mission trips are evaluated not only by the impact on the target area, but on those who minister. It’s a shift in attitudes toward domestic and international outreach.

By Jeff Brumley

It’s usually called a mission trip when a group of college students and their campus minister visit a ministry located in a struggling out-of-state neighborhood.

But that’s not what a group of Clemson University undergrads and their leader are calling this week’s visit to Touching Miami with Love, a ministry with Baptist ties located in one of South Florida’s toughest neighborhoods.

Instead, they’re calling it a pilgrimage.

“A pilgrimage is to a site, and in this case what we’re saying is that there is potential for sacred moments to occur in whatever places we travel to,” said Casey Callahan, the campus minister of the Cooperative Student Fellowship at the South Carolina university.

Callahan, who wrote on the topic last month, said the switch in terminology is much more than a clever rhetorical device, and instead reflects an altogether new way of conceiving service trips.

“Before there was an element that the people stepping off the bus have all the answers and all the power and are coming to the rescue,” he said. “It ... keeps them as lesser-than folks who can only receive and have nothing to offer.”

Now the goal is to help participants realize it is they who may come away transformed by their involvement, said Callahan, also the minister of students and mission at First Baptist Church of Clemson.

“It’s to change their awareness of the world, their perspective on what it means to be human and live in a certain place.”

Such views of mission are becoming increasingly common in American churches and are beginning to shift attitudes toward domestic and overseas outreach in often radical ways.

‘Toxic charity’

The evolution in thinking about missions began years ago among international missionaries concerned that their efforts were doing more harm than good. More recently it’s been catching domestically and is growing, said Bob Lupton, author of the 2011 book Toxic Charity.

“I’m hearing from churches and groups all over the country,” he said. “It feels to me like a movement is astir into developmental charity and away from one-way charity.”

Many, including Callahan, are inspired by recent books like Lupton’s to see previous mission efforts as more harmful than good when teams simply visit an area, do some work, then leave.

“That kind of charity is not moving the poor out of poverty, it is perpetuating poverty,” Lupton said.

And that is the definition of “toxic charity,” he added.

“It produces dependency and erodes worth ethic,” he said. “That kind of one-way giving tends to diminish people rather than move them out of poverty.”

Ministries ‘in a bind’

One force resisting this change, however, are some ministries and organizations that depend heavily on the manpower and other resources that generally come with the quick-hit mission teams.

“Folks on the receiving end are in a bind,” Lupton said. “They need the money that groups like this bring, but they also know they are spending a lot of their time doing volunteer coordination.”

But other organizations are beginning to embrace the new paradigm on missions, seeing that historic ways of operating were keeping the very people they exist to help in continuous poverty, Lupton said.

“It’s an internal conflict but it’s increasingly the groups who ... tend to be more mature who are saying ‘we are about developing people, developing long-term relationships and outside involvement doesn’t accomplish that.’”

'We need local people'

That’s been a growing awareness at Touching Miami with Love, a multi-services ministry for adults and children in the city’s crime- and poverty-plagued Overtown area.

Assistant Director Angel Pittman said the organization has already begun limiting the number of visiting groups it will host annually, choosing instead to hire former clients and to develop a more consistent volunteer base.

“We love [visiting] people to come along side us because they provide energy and support and they get some practical hands-on experience,” Pittman said. “But we need local people, right here, volunteering day in and day out.”

Decreasing dependency on outside groups means Touching Miami with Love can be more selective in the number and size of groups it accepts. Pittman said what used to be 40- and 50-member groups is down — as in the case of the Clemson students — in the 20s now.

“I say the mission trip is fine, but only if it leads you to go back to your own community to implement what you’ve learned here,” Pittman said.

‘Open our eyes, spiritually’

That message is one that a number of the Clemson students said they heard loud and clear from Callahan and Pittman.

“Casey pointed out that a lot of times it’s really difficult for us as majority, middle-class white students ... to go into a trip like this and not think we are helping these poor, marginalized people,” said senior and First Baptist Church member Emily Moeller, 21.

“What I like about the term ‘pilgrimage’ is it breaks that stereotype of spring break trips — it is us who are coming here to learn,” she said.

During their visit this week, the Clemson students are performing a lot of the tasks typical of college spring break mission trips, including light construction and remodeling, cleaning and organizing donations and working with children attending after-school programs.

But it didn’t feel like such trips and tasks typically do, Laura Drbohlav, 23, said after spending Monday morning cutting and installing insulation at Touching Miami with Love.

“I’m here to help, but I’m also here to be accepting of their culture and to get something from them,” Drbohlav said. That something, she added, was how to live in community with neighbors in ways she doesn’t experience in her college community.

“These people can open our eyes spiritually in a way that other people can’t do, and they show us how to live in a real, true community.”

That kind of awareness will make this group of students better in their ministries back home, Callahan said.

“We need to be able to step outside our comfort zones and see things from a different perspective,” he said. “We need these experiences to help us be better Christians in our communities.”